“Young Barristers” responds to the statement made by GPB on August 6, 2015 on the monitoring published by the organization about  salaries, bonuses, salary supplements and travel expenses paid to the Director General, Deputy Directors, members and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the member of Monitoring Council and Public Council  of the Georgian Public Broadcaster and on certain opinions, expressed by the Head of the organization, Archil Kaikatsishvili during his interview with Georgian newspaper “Alia”. In particular, PB states, that “it is beyond any legal grounds, that PB is intentionally hiding public information about salaries, paid to its staff. Besides, the allegation about the salaries paid to TV hosts is also unacceptable for us, since it is not based on any official source of information or documental materials and accordingly is absolutely unjustified and groundless. Beyond this, it is completely   unclear upon which criteria was the Broadcaster’s wage policy evaluated by the organization as “discriminatory””. 

We consider it reasonable to remind to the society, that the Head of the organization, Archil Kaikatsishvili stated to the newspaper during the interview, that: “according to our information, TV hosts in PB have monthly salaries of 15-20 thousand GEL, which is an astronomical amount of money. We were only requesting to confirm or refuse this information, but unfortunately, we didn’t have opportunity to do this.” In addition, the organization has published the results of the monitoring on August 6, 2015, in which we claim  that “wage policy of GPB is discriminatory and business trips are huge”. As it is stated in the special statement of GPB, “the PB provides public information on the ground of article 41(2) of the Constitution of Georgia and articles 2(1), 10 (1), 271, 28 (1) and 44(1) of the General Administrative Code of Georgia regulating this issue.  Accordingly, if any public information request was rejected by GPB, it was in  full compliance with the law and requirements of law”.      

“Young Barristers” welcomes the statement made by GPB for the society, regardless of whether it agrees with legal justification or factual reasoning of this statement or not. We think that TV channel should act in compliance with public interest in addition to law. Accordingly, the organization appeals to Giorgi Baratashvili, the Director General of the PB: discussion about whether PB agrees with the results of the monitoring, represented by “Young Barristers” or not, whether the use of the term “discriminatory” in relation to the wage policy implemented by PB is legally justified or not, whether the monitoring, prepared by the organization is correct or not, can only be reasonable after GPB has published official information reflecting the salaries, bonuses, salary supplements and travel expanses paid to the hosts,  authors and producers of certain social and political programs during 2013-2015,  on the official web-page of the Television, as well as after PB has provided relevant information about the salaries and other expanses paid to the staff of radio 1 and radio 2 of  all the other journalists of  GPB . Only after this we can judge the results of the monitoring prepared by “Young Barristers”.  The organization is also concerned by the issue of the morning program as well. While morning programs by all private channels in the country are broadcasted via live, the PB’s morning program “our morning” is prepared in the form of a record. We consider it disrespectful towards the audience.    The Director General of the channel, Giorgi Baratashvili explains, that in some cases, the program was prepared in the form of record, since  some guests refused to come early in the morning; as for the rest, the program was broadcasted normally”.” We believe, that the Director of PB is misleading the society, as long as, the program “our morning” has never been broadcasted via live and it is not clear which guests he is talking about                                                            

The organization “Young Barristers” is ready to carry on its activities to make PB more accountable to the society.