It’s been eight years since Leila, in her forties, started work at the enrichment plant of the Shukruti mine in Chiatura, a manganese-mining town in western Georgia. At first, Leila supervised deliveries to the plant for further processing, but these days she must stand by machinery filled with wet manganese ore at a strip mine. Leila’s job is to remove rocks and wood, otherwise they get stuck in the sorting machine and the machinery will have to stop. She could even be fired.
Although Leila’s workplace is on the sixth floor of an eight-story building, it is raining inside. There are giant holes in the roof, floor, walls—almost everywhere. As she is in regular contact with water, Leila may not use an electric heater. Instead, Leila must make do with a wood burner, but though no-one brings her the wood). Instead, she uses what she finds among the manganese ore, though it gets pretty tough in windy weather.
Manganese extraction was launched in Chiatura more than a century ago, and the town’s seven functioning mines are currently owned by Georgian Manganese Ltd., which was sold to Georgian American Alloys in March 2013. Elderly workers remember Soviet times like a fairy tale: a good salary, reasonable working conditions, proper holidays.
