The director of "Toplofikatsia Sofia" Eng. Alexander Alexandrov is resigning from his post, he himself announced, quoted by BNT. The motives - he does not wish to be the occasion and object of political speculations and manipulative suggestions that undermine his authority and aim to cast doubt on his professional expertise and ethics.
In a position with the media, Eng. Alexandrov highlighted the achievements of the company during his management.
Here is the full position:
"In connection with the information disseminated in recent days regarding the management of the largest heating company in the country, I would like to recall the following facts:
During the period of my administration, with the grant funding from the US Trade and Development Agency, amounting to nearly $1 million under a contract concluded with the Sofia Municipality, a plan was drawn up for the rehabilitation and modernization of “Toplofikatsia Sofia” EAD, executed by the consultant “Black and Veatch”, with the support of Green Energy Advisors LLC and Marathon Capital LLC. It includes both technical, operational and financial stabilization, as well as capacity and network modernization, while at the same time it was fully compliant with the “green deal” in the EU. Later, it became the basis of the “Comprehensive strategy for modernization and ecological transformation of “Toplofikatsia Sofia” EAD“. On the basis of these projects, the Company applied to the Ministry of Energy for financing from the Modernization Fund, and in the meantime financing was secured for the implementation of the plan prepared by the American consultants.
In the last 5 years “Heating Sofia“ EAD took several big steps in the direction of digitizing processes, which brought it closer to the modern utility companies in the sector. Guided by the vision of a Smart Heating System, as an integral part of the concept of smart cities, we implemented a Monitoring and Control System (SCADA) at the subscriber stations. At the moment “Heating Sofia” EAD has a thermo-hydraulic model, which was developed with the computer simulation environment Termis v.7 - a world-leading software for modeling heating networks.
We successfully worked on implementing a modern automated platform for thermo-hydraulic modeling, monitoring and management of the heat transfer network.
We have completed and continue to upgrade the implementation of SAP in the Company's processes.
We have developed a new user site with a customer portal offering a large number of electronic services in order to increase our customer satisfaction.
Over the past five years, our efforts have been rewarded with a steady upward trend in the number of our customers, which increased by 15,094 or +3.4%. During the same period, 585 new buildings were connected to the heat transfer network and as a result the route was increased by over 24 km.
We faced the challenge of operating and maintaining a heat transmission network built in the middle of the last century without having sufficient liquidity for the necessary investment and repair activities. And despite these difficulties, at that time preparations began and the largest-scale reconstruction of main heating pipes in the history of the Company was commissioned.
For all this, I want to thank the dedication and professionalism of the team we worked with!
I have made the decision to resign from the post of executive director of “Toplofikatsia Sofia” EAD, as I do not wish to be the occasion and object of political speculations and manipulative suggestions that undermine my authority and aim to cast doubt on my professional expertise and ethics!
I use the opportunity to once again thank all the employees of “Toplofikatsia Sofia” EAD for the support and trust they had in me!