The Guria News Lodges Complaint to Court

Public servants in Guria (west Georgia) keep breaching the rules of providing public information and it tends to be recurrent, the Guria News editorial staff reports.

In particular, according to the newspaper staff on January 27, 2010 journalist Shorena Glonti appealed to the Lanchkhuti Municipality Gamgebeli for the provision of four pieces of public information. In response, on February 4 the journalist was provided full information to the first application only, the second application was satisfied incompletely and for the remaining two pieces of information the journalist was set a one-month term to wait.

The requested public information was related to the Lanchkhuti Municipality Gamgeoba staff list including their salaries, as well as the detailed data of business trip expanses, bonuses and phone charges apportioned from the local budget in 2008-2009 and state procurements carried out within the funding for the local bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the sum spent from the Municipality reserve 2009.

"That is not a new thing - last year the Guria News journalist Nato Gogelia was able to obtain public information from Sakrebulo through the court mediation," editorial staff reported.

In addition, according to the Guria News, journalists face problems when obtaining comments - public officials either refuse or redirect them to the press services of various ministries or agencies.

"Even though the newspaper has appealed to the court to speed up the court examination into the case and avoid the lingering of the provision of information to the journalist the process is still remains unmoved," the Guria News staff reported.