“I don’t know what I would do, if they really close for good,” she said. Her face wrinkled, she sighed and then turned towards the entrance of the Soviet-built factory. Today she would work but she wasn’t sure what the future held.
This is a story playing out across Georgia, where industrial unrest is growing as the lari currency drops in value and inflation starts to rise. Like the rest of the region, vital remittances from abroad, mainly Russia, have fallen and frustration is growing with the government.
Factories and mines are reporting worker unrest and bosses are warning of closures and redundancies.
Revaz Karanadze is an activist with the Tbilisi Solidarity Network, a grassroots organisation supporting regional labour protests. She said falling global oil prices had undermined the economy.
“The economic situation in the region, and especially oil-producing neighbour Azerbaijan, hits the factory and mining,” she said.
The Azot chemical plant produces fertilisers, as well as ammonia, sodium cyanide, nitric acid and liquid oxygen. It uses more than 300m cubic meters of gas per year, the highest consumption in Georgia. Two-thirds of its costs are gas.
The problem is that it negotiated an 8 year price deal for gas in 2011 when oil prices, which drive gas prices, were around $115/barrel. They are now around a third of that price.
Georgian ministers and SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned company that supplies the gas, have said that a deal is in sight but Manana, the factory worker, was less optimistic.
“They always say it’ll get better, but we are not the only ones struggling. Who knows what tomorrow will bring,” she said.
