“Give us, displaced teachers, the means to live and to grow professionally”; “We escaped bullets—don’t let us die of hunger” — these were among the messages addressed to the president by displaced teachers gathered on December 29, 2009, near the iron fence of the presidential residence in Avlabari.

The protesters were demanding improved social conditions and the continuation of the compensation payments they had been receiving for a year and a half but had recently been told would be discontinued starting in January.

A week earlier, displaced teachers had adopted a resolution at a forum held in Tbilisi, outlining the major problems they faced. The list included: ending the division of internally displaced persons (IDPs) into “old” and “new” categories; allocating state funds for teachers’ professional development; adopting a legal act granting displaced teachers employment priority across Georgia whenever relevant vacancies arise; and continuing compensation payments for displaced teachers. The resolution, containing these demands, was sent to the President of Georgia, the Minister of Education and Science, and other government officials — but none of them responded.

Since their demands were ignored, the teachers organized another protest on February 3, 2010. Displaced teachers gathered in front of the Ministry of Education and Science, demanding a meeting with Minister Dimitri Shashkin, but no one from the ministry came out to speak with them. As they stated, despite numerous attempts, they had failed to draw the government’s attention to their hardship.

According to Tsotne Qavlashvili, Deputy Head of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance, the formation of the state budget was the result of discussions between the Ministries of Education and Finance: “The government did not consider this issue a priority; that is why it will not be included in the 2010 state budget,” he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.