The summer season on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast has officially opened, but most hotels are at risk of being understaffed and not opening due to the problem of issuing work visas for employees from third countries outside the European Union.
Ivelin Kichukov, chairman of the Bulgarian Tourism Association (BAT), said this to TravelNews. According to him, the situation is already desperate.
„The administration has abdicated, and the summer season has already begun. The representatives of the tourism business, in order to survive, have submitted documents for thousands of workers from third countries that they need, but unfortunately they cannot arrive in Bulgaria due to the lack of organization from the administration to process the documents,” commented Kichukov.< /p>
Despite promises by the state to actively engage in solving the problem of issuing work visas by expanding resources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic missions, no measures have yet been taken.
BAT has sent an urgent letter to the Prime Minister, the President, the Foreign Ministry and other institutions with a request that the matter be resolved as soon as possible.
„Our country does not give people the opportunity to come and work here because of the Bulgarian administration, which is unable to organize the process of issuing visas. We, the representatives of the tourism sector in the country, appeal specifically to the institutions for special attention to the seriousness of this problem we are facing, related to the impossibility of employees from third countries to obtain work visas”, the letter reads.
BAT urgently insists that the procedures for issuing work visas for potential workers from third countries be simplified, that additional jobs be provided in the Bulgarian embassies, as well as other effective and positive measures be taken, such as secondment of employees from the Ministry of foreign affairs that would support the tourism sector in our country, announced Ivelin Kichukov.
The visa center in Uzbekistan has not been able to record dates for submitting a visa application for almost a month. Its 10-day electronic system gives an option for only a few hours to book an appointment to submit a visa application.
If someone is lucky enough to hit this time frame, then they would have a chance to get a date in about 20 days to submit their application for a “C“ visa. After the application is submitted, the visa processing period is another 30 days. This practically means that the employees who would be lucky enough to reach the stage of “submitting a visa application”, could arrive only in the second half of the summer season, which is catastrophic, Kichukov explained.
The situation is even worse for workers wishing to work in Bulgaria from Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Citizens of Kyrgyzstan travel hundreds of kilometers to apply for a visa all the way to the embassy in Kazakhstan. The visa center in Almaty, which is closer to the Kyrgyz border, has announced that there are no available dates for submitting applications for the "C" visa. Free hours are rarely given only in Astana, which is 12 hours away from Kyrgyzstan. There, available dates are 20 to 30 days ahead. Visa processing is more than 30 days.
In the tourism sector, there are currently over 70,000 unfilled jobs (compared to last year, when it was around 50,000), of which approximately 25,000 are in the Burgas region and 20,000 in the Varna region, show the BAT data.
If we give the example of neighboring Greece – there are more than 150,000 vacancies in the tourism sector, but unlike our difficult procedures for issuing work visas, theirs are significantly faster and easier, which makes them a preferred destination for workers, comments Ivelin Kichukov.