„Quietly, just before the summer vacation, the Council of Ministers is introducing the new Water Supply and Sewerage Act. No reform in the sector is planned. The recommendations of the parliamentary commission on water scarcity, which has been in session for 6 months, have not been reflected.
The project burdens citizens with 3 new fees - access to water supply, to drainage, to water purification. That is, even people without water and those who do not live in their homes will still have to pay 3 fees every month for water that they do not use.“
This is stated by Maya Manolova, leader of the civic platform Stand Up.BG, in her position. She specifies that the amount of the new "water meter" fees and what costs will be covered by them are not specified in the law, as this is left to the by-laws of the officials in the MRDPW.
According to Manolova, the bill copies the twice rejected laws from 2020 and 2022, and does not meet the requirements in the Recovery and Sustainability Plan, from which over 1 billion leva are expected.
Next, in their position, the civil platform criticizes the state's intention to close municipal water supply companies by obliging them to join water associations. According to Manolova, municipal companies maintain lower water prices, the response time is faster and customers have a more direct connection with the persons responsible for their water. Stand Up.BG also criticizes the provisions in these mergers to maintain the current approach for a single price for water throughout the region, as "municipalities with gravity water supply and naturally clean water will pay the same bills as those with pumped water supply and the need for more efforts to purify water."
“On the other hand, the law continues to lack definitions and guarantees for supporting the “water poor“ in our country, which are becoming more and more numerous with the constant increase in water prices. In regions such as Razgrad, where water is the most expensive, water bills of over 50-60 BGN are common.” – Maya Manolova adds to her position.”
According to her, there is also no solution for the fair distribution of “total consumption“ of water from individual households in condominiums, while maintaining vicious opportunities for repeated payment for the same amounts of water consumed and unfairly burdening the correct payers at the expense of the incorrect ones.
In his position, the leader of Stand Up.BG concludes that all these problems are clearly not a priority for the Council of Ministers, and instead of easing the bills of people burdened with rising prices, they are burdening them with new fees.