Defense Minister Irakli Alasania announced on Monday about appointment his new two deputies – Tamar Karosanidze and Zaza Broladze.

As deputy defense minister, Karosanidze will be in charge of human resources and education issues and Broladze will oversee MoD’s procurements.

Karosanidze has most recently served as a deputy chief of party with USAID-funded Policy, Advocacy and Civil Society Development in Georgia, a four-year project which aims at strengthening civil society’s role.

Before that she was an executive director of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Georgia.

Before taking deputy defense minister’s post, Zaza Broladze was a managing director at Policy and Management Consulting Group LLC (PMCG); in this company he was in charge of coordinating public sector consulting projects, as well as internal strategic planning and capacity building.

Broladze served as chairman of the state statistics office for more than a year in 2005-2006.

Defense Minister Irakli Alasania said that appointment of Tamar Karosanidze as one of his deputies was yet another sign from the new leadership of MoD that it was willing to make the ministry more transparent and accountable before the society.

“This is the first time I am taking the public office,” Karosanidze said. “I took this decision because there is a real will and desire on the part of the ministry leadership to make [MoD] more transparent and open, which is important not only for efficient work of this ministry, but also for increasing level of democracy in the country and for NATO integration.”

Alasania hailed Broladze as “one of the best experts in financial planning” in Georgia. “Procurements system is one of those that were causing most of the question marks in our society,” Alasania said. “We should make this system clean as soon as possible.”

“Making this system [of MoD’s procurements] transparent and providing guarantees that taxpayers money is efficiently spent and used for the army will be the largest challenge I have ever faced in my life,” Broladze said.

With these new appointments, the Defense Minister Irakli Alasania now has five deputies; other three deputies are: Levan Dolidze, who is the first deputy defense minister; Alexander Burchuladze and Irakli Gegechkori.