Member of reshuffled cabinet will appear at parliamentary hearings in Kutaisi on Friday and Saturday as the government faces confidence vote after PM Irakli Garibashvili sacked five ministers and moved two ministers to other cabinet posts.

Ministers will appear before lawmakers at parliamentary committee hearings and PM Garibashvili will face questioning from opposition lawmakers at a meeting of UNM parliamentary minority group on Friday; three hours have been allocated for this meeting with the PM, which is scheduled to start at 3pm local time.

The PM and his cabinet members will appear again before lawmakers at a parliamentary session on Saturday when confidence vote in scheduled.

Confirmation of the reshuffled cabinet, which requires more than half of the parliament members’ votes, is not likely to face any hurdles in the 150-seat legislative body, where ruling GD coalition holds 84 seats.

PM Garibashvili announced about cabinet reshuffle, affecting seven ministers, on July 21.

He named on the same day Sozar Subari, who held prison system minister’s post since GD came into power, for the post of the minister for internally displaced persons and accommodation, replacing Davit Darakhvelidze.

Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development Elguja Khokrishvili, who was appointed on this post in April, was nominated for the post of the Minister of Environment Protection, replacing Khatuna Gogaladze.

Other ministers, who have lost posts in the cabinet along with Darakhvelidze and Gogaladze, are: Agriculture Minister Shalva Pipia; Minister of Culture Guram Odisharia and State Minister for Diaspora Konstantine Surguladze.
 
On July 22 PM nominated Giorgi Mgebrishvili, governor of Kvemo Kartli region, as minister in charge of penitentiary system. Mgebrishvili has served as governor of Kvemo Kartli region since December, 2013. He served as an investigator in the Interior Ministry in 1998-2004 and then was an investigator in the financial police at the Ministry of Finance till 2007. He served at various positions in the Revenue Service at the Ministry of Finance in 2007-2012 before being promoted as head of the customs department at the Revenue Service in November, 2012. He was head of the Interior Ministry’s state security agency for couple of months till November, 2013.

Otar Danelia, first deputy minister of agriculture, was named for the post of agriculture minister. Danelia was appointed as deputy minister of agriculture in April, 2014. Before that he served as head of the Interior Ministry’s Service Agency for few months and was deputy head of logistics department at the Interior Ministry since 2013.

Davit Shavliashvili, head of the department of roads, was nominated for the minister of infrastructure. He served as head of the department of roads at the same ministry since April, 2013 and before that was head of the natural resources agency at the ministry of energy, where he was appointed in December, 2012. Shavliashvili, 30, will be the second-youngest cabinet member; the youngest one is Interior Minister Alexandre Tchikaidze who is 29.
 
Gela Dumbadze, deputy state minister for diaspora, will be promoted to post of the state minister for diaspora. He has served at various positions in the Foreign Ministry since 1998, among them was head of the department for diaspora in 2005-2007. He served at the Georgian embassies in Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Dumbadze was appointed as deputy state minister for diaspora in June, 2014.

On July 23 the PM named for the post of the culture minister Mikheil Giorgadze, co-founder and chief executive of Eastern Promotion, a company best known for organizing a long-running annual Tbilisi Jazz Festival.