No to Stone Dry Cutting – an Initiative Presented to the Parliament of Georgia

On March 14, 2024, the members of the “My City Kills Me”/”Green Pole” movement team presented to the Parliament of Georgia an initiative to increase the amount of the fine for legal entities throughout Georgia for cases of dry cutting of engineered stone from the existing 1000₾ to 5000₾. Since 2018, our team has been working on the issue of monitoring dry stone processing. With our involvement, hundreds of official statements and reports have been sent to the municipal inspection of the relevant city to detect and eliminate cases of law violations. Dry stone processing is one of the main reasons for the development of lung disease and silicosis in people employed in construction companies, which our team has confirmed through the health research of people employed in the above-mentioned sector.

It should be noted that the amount of the fine for stone processing by the dry method is almost less than the cost of different types of equipment that would have to be purchased for the stone processing by the wet method. Based on this, the lawyer of “Green Pole,” Vakhtang Baramashvili, prepared the draft law on increasing the fine. The draft law is planned to be discussed in the next few months.