Bulgarian Roma Ghetto's Water Supply Cut Off over Unpaid Bills

The local water utility in Bulgaria's Shumen has started to cut off the water supply of the Roma ghetto over unpaid bills with the help of the police. Photo by BGNES

Employees of a utility in the northeastern Bulgarian city of Shumen have started to cut off the water supply of the local Roma ghetto, "Byalata Prast" ("White Soil"), because of the unpaid bills of its residents.

In cutting off the water supply of the Roma, they were escorted by police in anticipation of resistance even though their fears failed to materialize, the BGNES news agency reported.

The residents of the Roma ghetto in Shumen owe the utility hundreds of thousands of BGN for water bills, and less than 1% of the total sum has been paid.

"In this quarter we have registered a 99% loss. Only two of the streets there owe over BGN 200 000 for 105 000 cubic meters of water since the beginning of 2012. They have paid only BGN 2 500 for this entire period," explained Atanas Dimitrov, head of the Shumen water supply utility.

The rest of the homes in the ghetto do not even have water gauges, and the utility has just been charging them for 5 cubic meters of water every month by default, for a total of BGN 11.16.

The problem with this approach, however, is the fact that many of the homes in the Roma quarter house enormous extended families that consume a lot more water than the estimate average for a nuclear family, employees explain.

Most of the residents of the Roma ghetto in Shumen have accepted the utility's move as fair, while complaining that they have no jobs in order to make money and pay their bills.

We just wish that these citizens of the Republic of Bulgaria become fair clients of the water supply utility, and a part of the system, as the power utility managed to get them to do," Dimitrov stated.

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