I hope that from tomorrow there will be surface urban transport again in Sofia and that the crisis with the strike and protests of the workers in this very important system in the capital will end. This was stated by Ivan Takov, chairman of the Local Coalition "BSP for Bulgaria" and the Standing Committee on Transport and Road Safety in the SOS, at a briefing in the Sofia Municipality. It took place before the start of the joint meeting of the committees on transport, finance and economy.
"The time for idle talk about the transport crisis in the Sofia Municipality is over, said Ivan Takov. - We have been waiting for 6 days for the mayor and the administration to deal with the transport chaos in the city. We all saw that they can't, so SOS will cope. Now that we already have the assurance of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that an additional 15 million leva will be allocated for public transport in Sofia, Sofia Municipality will have to respond with the same amount from the budget and we will cope with the crisis. Thus, from April 1, the salaries of transport workers will be increased by 300 leva. The budget has the opportunity to absorb these 15 million leva, which will be redirected to the function in question 606".
Ivan Takov, however, was categorical that with his behavior in this transport crisis, Mayor Vasil Terziev has dealt another very heavy blow to the authority of the Sofia Municipality institution. "It is unacceptable to shift my responsibilities and justify my negligence and inaction with the government, the Sofia Municipal Council and whoever else, and to allow the city to be blocked and in chaos for 6 days due to the lack of ground transport, he commented. - That is why, in my capacity as chairman of the transport committee in the Sofia Municipal Council, a few days ago I made a commitment to deal with the problems and today we are on the verge of fulfilling it. I hope that from tomorrow the ground transport will resume its work and that we do not create additional troubles for the high school graduates, their parents and teachers, who have exams on Wednesday and Friday.
He added that he hopes that the proposed draft for an economic framework for transport will be adopted by the members of the committee on transport and road safety, as well as on finance and economics, and then submitted for a vote and adopted by the Sofia City Council together with the 2025 budget at the upcoming regular meeting on May 29. "We will also solve this problem that the mayor and his administration created, but the Sofia Municipality cannot continue to work in this way, said Ivan Takov. - With his actions in recent days, Terziev has clearly shown that Sofia does not need him. Since he is not responsible for anything and has no commitment to the problems, and the SOS can solve them, I don't understand what he is for".
Ivan Takov noted that the BSP has a very clear and specific commitment to the working people of Sofia, which he represents. "Our duty is to them and we will not stop fulfilling it," he said. - We will not stop insisting that the mayor and his deputy for finance also implement the SOS decision, with which, at the initiative of the BSP, we allocated 15 million leva to improve working conditions in the two companies - Sofia Electric Transport and Sofia Autotransport".
The chairman of the Standing Committee on Transport and Road Safety announced that he had requested from all transport companies a report on the number of employees in their administrations. "I heard them talking about 700 administrative people in all municipal transport companies. In my opinion, this is not true at all," said Ivan Takov. - Metropolitan told me that their administration is under 3%. In electric transport - about 6%, which means about 60 people. CGM told me that over the past 9 months they have carried out a serious optimization of personnel, mainly in the administration. However, on Tuesday I will receive the reports from all companies and I will have complete clarity about the number of employees in their administrations. We cannot talk about knee-jerk layoffs before the necessary comprehensive analyses are made in the companies themselves.