Deputy Mayor of Sofia: The garbage collection will not stop after May 19

The collection and cleaning of the streets in eight regions of Sofia will not stop after May 19. This is predicted by the Deputy Mayor of Finance Ivan Vassilev, after garbage companies related to Rumen Gaitanski-Wolf, they have announced that they are stopping work after that date because of delayed payments from the municipality for nearly 9 million levs.

Unpaid invoices have been operated by them for the period from the end of December so far. This was indicated yesterday in a message from the two companies to the media. It is alleged that notifications have already been sent to the municipality, but to no avail.

The filing of the financial claim by the two private companies coincided with the protest of the workers in the terrestrial transport of Sofia seeking an increase in wages. Vasilev assumed that the two requests were coordinated and came from one center.

Asked if there was a delay in payment to the two companies, Deputy Mayor Vasilev explained that « under a contract we have 60 days from the moment when the invoice is in the municipality. »

Currently, it has had invoices for a total of BGN 100 million, not only for garbage cleaning, but also from other companies with which the municipality has contracts.

« The delay in payments is because there is no budget of the Sofia Municipality for 2025. I call on the City Council to vote on May 29 to open payments, » Vassilev said.

Until the adoption of the new budget, the municipality operates with a limit with a limit as they were for the same months last year. Since then, remuneration in municipal health, culture and public transport have been increased. « So we pay more than the previous years more, but with the limits (on the old budget) we give some and less to others, » explained the deputy mayor.

It was not quite clear from the statement of the mayor of what his optimism was on the continuation of the cleaning, but according to Dnevnik, the options were: To negotiate another delay until the adoption of the municipal budget or temporarily eight neighborhoods should be serviced by other cleaning companies operating in the territory of neighboring areas. Now the others besides Gaitanski-Wolf are the Domuschiev brothers and the Pernik company « Titan » by Ivo Ivanov and Dimitar Borisov.

The Sofia Municipality is to announce public procurement for garbage collection and cleaning of public places in Sofia, as the contracts for this activity expire this year. Recently, the Ecology Committee discussed the option of creating a municipal company to take over one of the seven areas for cleaning and garbage collection of the capital. If the experiment is successful, the activity can be developed and thus displaced some of the permanent operators in this business.