For more than two years, there has been no normal maintenance of the road network in Bulgaria. The reason is the lack of contracts for road maintenance, reported "Mediapool".
This situation was reached after the contracts from the time of the cabinet "Borisov 3" were declared vicious by the caretaker government of Stefan Yanev in 2021.
Since then, not a single cabinet - official or regular - has been able to solve this problem. Public procurements are launched, then suspended or terminated. If it comes to the choice of companies, an appeal follows, and so for the third year in a row.
The result is visible to all - broken roads, potholes, dangerously overhanging trees, uncleaned grass and bushes, lack of markings and guardrails. There are no orders for repairs from the road agency, whose bosses change every few months.
Now one of the first orders of the Acting Minister of Regional Development, Violeta Koritarova, is to restore the work of the competition commissions (Order No. RD-02-14-462) in the "Road Infrastructure" agency. (API) on the procedures for maintaining the republican roads. It was issued on April 10, a day after Dimitar Glavchev's government was sworn in before the parliament.
"We cannot afford to waste more time, we all see how the condition of the roads deteriorates day by day due to the lack of ongoing maintenance in recent years," says Koritarova, quoted by the press center of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works (MDRB). This is happening on the historic date of May 9 in front of a non-governmental organization "European Center for Transport Policies", which is unofficially claimed in the road industry to be financed by party headquarters.
A day later, on May 10, the auction commissions suddenly make several decisions. Almost all of them (with a few exceptions) are related to positions in which the Breznik-registered "Nivel stroy" - the company with in-house contracts for the construction of the highway "Hemus" and the Vidin - Botevgrad expressway.
It is undeniable that the agony surrounding these orders and the fear of making a decision must end. But the question of how the companies are chosen remains open. Doubts are that everything happens in the same "transparent" way in which Violeta Koritarova communicates with society and the media.
Since taking office, the minister has not given a single press conference, she has not spoken to televisions or other media.
And this is important to do, because society expects transparency and clarity. In the era of GERB, road construction has become synonymous with non-transparent draining of hundreds of millions from the national budget and European funds. The fact that the prosecutor's office, DANS and other institutions turn a blind eye suggests that they are subordinated to the same interests that benefit the vicious contracts.
The behavior of the minister caused comments in the road industry that the return of the commissioners is already a matter of a few more signatures. These are companies that do not work on the sites, but only distribute the work between the actually working companies - they assign the work to them, and keep for themselves the commissions that go up the chain.