The disposal of household, industrial or construction waste in large quantities in unauthorized places should become a crime, which will be punished with imprisonment and a fine.
This is proposed by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) with prepared changes to the Criminal Code, which supplement existing norms, the press center of the department reports.
The commitment to criminalization was publicly announced by Minister Georgi Georgiev last week and announced by Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov yesterday, during a meeting with the National Municipal and Regional Administration of the Republic of Bulgaria, where the proposal received overwhelming support.
Currently, the criminal procedure only covers entities that have obligations regarding waste management. And dumping waste in unauthorized places is now only an administrative violation, punishable by a fine of 300 to 1,000 leva for individuals and 1,400 to 4,000 leva for legal entities.
The Ministry of Justice proposes that dumping large quantities of waste outside landfills, which creates a danger to the life and health of people or causes significant damage to nature, be punished with imprisonment from one to five years and a fine of 5,000 to 30,000 leva.
This transposes a European directive, but above all, it offers a solution to a serious and current problem related to the health of citizens and environmental protection.