Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili met on July 19 the policemen who will set up a new Patrol Police in the capital city Tbilisi, after they graduate special courses in the Georgian Police Academy.

“You should be a model for the new Georgian police, which will be based on the western standards,” Mikheil Saakashvili said during the meeting with the officers of the Patrol Police, which will start to work from late July.

The setting up the Patrol Police is a part of the reforms in the Interior Ministry. There will be total 650 policemen in the Patrol Police. Thousands of policemen have been already fired as a result of cutting down the number of the employees of the Interior Ministry.

On July 19, the former policemen, who have lost their jobs as a result of reform,  held a protest rally in Tbilisi and Kutaisi demanding from the government repayment of the salary backlog.