site.btaUPDATED PM Petkov: Road Infrastructure Agency Chairman Should Be Removed Immediately  

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, outgoing Prime Minister Kiril Petkov wrote that he expect Regional Development and Public Works Minister Grozdan Karadjov to immediately remove from office the Chairman of the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) as his actions and lack thereof have violated the public interest in favour of privileged companies. 

Late on Tuesday, the Government Information Service reported that the RIA has unilaterally terminated all newly-launched public procurement procedures for repair works and maintenance of the republican road network. The reason given by the RIA is "omissions in the documents for participation". The public procurement procedures were announced in April to replace the existing contracts where vicious construction practices had been established and probes had been launched. 

According to Petkov, the actions of the Regional Development Ministry and the RIA show that the country needs a new anti-corruption majority to put a stop to "the vicious models of the previous incumbents".

He sees the public procurement procedures' termination as a move to preserve "the public feeding trough for the construction companies close to GERB and its circles". "The same [companies] who have taken hundreds of millions in the dark for work on the roads under contracts for which checks are being conducted due to vicious construction practices," the post reads.  

In his words, by terminating the new and transparent public procurement procedures, the RIA is obstructing the road maintenance across the country in the next six to seven months and placing at risk citizens' health and life. "That should not be allowed to happen," Petkov wrote.

He calls on the MPs to urgently discuss the problems in the parliamentary Committee on Regional Policy, Public Works and Local Self-Government and to come out with a lawful decision that would guarantee that Bulgarian roads will be constantly maintained, including in the winter season.

"I expect the competent bodies, including the prosecuting magistracy, to look into the violations and renew the probes into the construction companies' work and the expedient spending of the hundreds of millions of public resources," Petkov wrote.

Minister Karadjov says PM Petkov is to blame

In response, outgoing Regional Development Minister Karadjov told a news briefing that it was not the RIA that cancelled the public procurement procedures but the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) through six consecutive procedures as a result of the documentations getting appealed. In his words, the procurement procedures in question thus did not reach even the stage of offer submission. 

The CPC has cancelled the procedures because the "listed conditions are extremely restrictive and favouring solely the State", which violates the rules of competition, Karadjov explained. The one to blame for these restrictive conditions is outgoing Prime Minister Kiril Petkov because "in his office it was insisted that there be maximum restrictions". The meeting in question was held at Petkov's office after March 31, Karadjov specified.

Extraordinary news briefing gives details

On Wednesday morning, Deputy Finance Minister Andrey Tsekov, Deputy Regional Development and Public Works Minister Ivaylo Staykov, and Nastimir Ananiev, Chair of the parliamentary Committee on Regional Policy and MP of Continue the Change, gave an extraordinary news briefing on the matter. 

Tsekov said that the RIA's unilateral actions have deprived the State of road maintenance in the next six to seven months. He explained that due to the termination of the public procurement procedures, the winter maintenance of the roads will either not be done or will have to be done based on the existing contracts, which two interdepartmental groups have found to contain many problems and which several institutions are probing.

"The RIA's actions and inactions are practically scraping off every single attempt to heal the state policy on road infrastructure," Tsekov commented. In his words, for over 10 years now this policy has been hostage to a vicious institutionalized system maintained by the RIA where the construction, maintenance and repair of roads are done non-transparently, incorrectly, and non-economically, in violation of the Public Procurement Act and the public interest. 

Deputy Regional Development Minister Staykov said that he had learned of the RIA's reasoning for the procedures' termination from the information published online and had not attended talks about why the termination was necessary.

Ananiev said that the parliamentary Committee on Regional Policy will hold an extraordinary sitting to seek a solution to the problem. 

"We want to pay [the money owed to road construction workers] but to scrupulous businesses. Only some 20% of the tasks have been checked, the rest have to be checked by the National Construction Control Directorate. It should be checked how the construction work was done, because we have signals that in some places it was not done but is expected to be paid," Ananiev told the briefing.