I am looking at photos of the new police BMWs and the outrage over them. You know what's more outrageous? That these were bought with money from the road safety fund. This is what Kh Bozhidar Bojanov wrote on a social network.
He recalled that the Road Safety Fund is filled by money from camera fines - when we pay the fine, it does not go into the "common pool" with state money, but goes into a fund that can only be spent on road safety projects proposed or approved by the Ministry of the Interior.
Even the Minister of Finance cannot dispose of the fund - only the Ministry of the Interior. And the Ministry of the Interior decided that the purchase of high-speed cars is a measure to increase road safety. When we found out about this, colleague Ananiev from PPDB had pointed out to the minister that buying cars is not exactly a safety measure, but the Ministry of the Interior, as I have said many times, is a state within a state.
(Not that the MoI doesn't need new cars, but the rationale for needing high-speed cars should be pretty solid. And public.)
It turned out that there are about BGN 300 million accumulated funds in this fund and the Ministry of Interior does not know what to do with them. Then I asked for a statement of all expenses from the fund, and there were mainly expenses for printers, toners, information systems maintenance and organizing events.
At the same time, at that time there were about 15 speed cameras in Sofia, which is extremely insufficient.
That is why we submitted proposals for two changes:
1. The fund should not be spent by the Ministry of the Interior, who clearly do not know what to do with these millions and buy cars, but by the State Agency "Road Traffic Safety" and/or
2. The money from the fund should be spent only on activities, according to a list determined by the state agency. You know that the Road Traffic Act was not moved to the second reading, despite our repeated insistence.
I am convinced that the Ministry of Internal Affairs should not be given tools to use without external control, because it generates both scandals and inefficiency. Data on the fund's activities are not public.
The Ministry of the Interior does not promote to the municipalities the possibility of financing road safety measures with it. And there are so many measures with a real effect on road safety that money from this fund can be spent on. But legal changes are needed because the Ministry of the Interior is not coping.
Needless to say, the more weight a parliamentary group has in the parliament, the more likely its proposals will be accepted and moved forward, Bojanov concludes his comment.