Defence Ministry announces soldiers dismissed for drug and gambling
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, October 10
Seventy employees of Georgia’s Defense Ministry and Armed Forces (GAF) were dismissed in 2016-2017 for drugs consumption and gambling, Georgia’s Defence Ministry told the local media.
Forty-three soldiers were revealed for drugs consumptionin 2016.
Thirty-six of them were fired, while 45 people were revealed and 33 of them were dismissedin 2017.
As for gambling, 15 discipline violation reports were issued in 2016, one Defence Ministry employee was dismissed.
Eleven such reports were written in 2017, no one has been dismissed as of yet.
This information has been published according to data of the Defence Ministry’s General Inspection and Military Police.
Georgia’s Defense Ministry strengthened control on gambling due to suicide cases since 2015.
At a special briefing then Minister of Defence Tinatin Khidasheli said the major cause of suicide within the Armed Forces was because soldiers were inundated with debt due to gamblingin 2015.
“Any employee of the Defence Ministry, no matter if he is a soldier or anyone else, who is caught gambling and this is confirmed, will be dismissed indefinitely from the Agency... There will be no second chance; the [offender] will be dismissed in the very first case,” Khidasheli stressed in 2015.
The policy has been in place for three years by now.
