Irakli Garibashvili: Instead of social assistance, we must offer work to able-bodied citizens

“Instead of social assistance, we must offer work to able-bodied citizens. We have begun to work on this and in the next few weeks we will present to the public the already tested program, which has been successfully implemented in European countries, ”Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said at a government meeting.

According to the Prime Minister, currently about 600 thousand socially unprotected citizens live in the country, about half of them are able-bodied citizens who are not interested in finding a job because of the existing social policy.

“The existing social policy shows that the current dynamics and trends in general are worrisome. Roughly speaking, within the framework of the existing social policy, we have accustomed our adult working-age population to unemployment, poverty and inaction.

In fact, today an able-bodied, socially unprotected citizen has no motivation to find a job for fear that the state will stop his social assistance, he has no motivation to improve his social position, and this is certainly a disaster. This is, of course, alarming, and we, as a government, must take bold and effective steps.

To this end, I have already talked with members of the government, with the economic team, I have an idea and initiative to create a working group headed by Deputy Prime Minister Levan Davitashvili, and in the next few weeks we will present a new social vision, a policy towards how to change the current situation. We must create a new program, it will be a program of state jobs, and instead of social assistance, it is necessary to offer our able-bodied citizens a job.

We can create thousands and tens of thousands of jobs for every city and municipality. We started to work and talk about this with the team, members of the government, and I believe that in the next few weeks we will present to the public an already tested program that has been tested and proven to be useful in successful European countries.

I want to say again that our citizens are accustomed to poverty and inaction, this is a truly unbearable situation. Today we have about 600 thousand socially unprotected citizens. Of these, no less than 200,000, if not more, about half are able-bodied citizens who, of course, are not interested in looking for work because of the existing social policy.

We know many examples when, for example, if a person buys a TV or refrigerator, points are deducted and social assistance stops. Or, if seasonal jobs are available in the market, they are not motivated to work in other positions and earn more, which, I repeat, is a disaster.

Therefore, we need to create a flexible system that allows, on the one hand, to provide assistance, but they must also be able to work, including in multiple locations, and generate more income.

People should be able to buy a TV, a refrigerator, renovate a house, etc. This should be our main focus and I look forward to launching this new program in January, which I think will completely change the existing reality. It is necessary to create a culture of work. We will give the population, our able-bodied citizens a sense, perspective, motivation to do real work. We must teach our citizens to work.

Within the framework of this program, we will develop vocational schools, train students in many specialties, and thus we will actually change this frozen state,” - Irakli Garibashvili said.