Teacher Dati Badalashvili has been dismissed from the library he founded in 2019, built through collected books.
The library is located in the village of Didi Tone, Tetritskaro municipality, the same village where writer Vaja-Pshavela worked as a teacher for two years.
At the village school, Dati Badalashvili teaches civic education and history, but he started creating the library earlier for local children.
According to Badalashvili in an interview with Batumelebi, the library is now under the municipality’s administration, and therefore the mayor acts as his employer.
“They cited the newly adopted anti-corruption law, which prohibits people from holding two public service positions without the supervisor’s consent. I had the right to work in two places, but this law was used against me, because of my activism for actively protesting the arrest of Mazia Amaglobeli, the detention of Zviad Ratiani and Kvaratskhelia, the brutal and senseless beatings of people, and many other things. On top of that, in July, I refused to help ‘Georgian Dream’ during the elections. That help would have required me, as a library employee, to deliver five votes for the party, and I refused,” says Dati Badalashvili.
Badalashvili recalls the process of creating the village library.
He says he collected books from abandoned places and began organizing the library this way.
“This way, I saved many books from the rain. The village council gave us one room. Later, with the support of the community, I set up a reading area. With a grant from Switzerland and donations from businesses, I installed windows, doors, and created a proper environment. Now the library has around 2,000 books. I also revived the tradition of reading in the village,” Badalashvili says.
Since the library was transferred to municipal management, the mayor’s office, as the library’s employer, paid Badalashvili a monthly salary of 219 GEL.
“Now it’s about 540 GEL, yet I was still dismissed. The library is so important to me that I even offered to reduce my teaching hours or leave school entirely, but they said I would be dismissed anyway because the contract runs until the end of the year,” he adds.
According to him, it is evident that the repressive laws of the ruling party are being used to silence critical voices:
“Still, no one should be silenced, because the system relies on fear. I’m not angry at them, because I knew I was in a fight and that I might lose something in it. I’m just saddened that the children are being affected, that they are harmed. I had many planned projects meetings with writers, psychologists, directors… film screenings. It was these activities that got me into the top ten of the ‘National Teacher Award.’
Now I’m sure they will bring in a party supporter who won’t do even a fraction of what I did. I understand that they hate me, but I hope they don’t let that hatred harm the children,” says Dati Badalashvili.