Rally Protests against Potholes in Bulgarian Capital

Society | March 11, 2010, Thursday // 16:36|  views

Protesters dressed as mummers, or "kukeri" with a sing that in rhyme derides the fact that Sofia streets are so with ridden with potholes that drivers are left with no safe space for driving. Photo by BGNES.

About a dozen protesters gathered in a rally that took place in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia over the poor street conditions.

The protesters gathered in front of the Sofia Municipality building to submit an official statement with their demands, with a couple of them dressed in costumes of traditional Bulgarian mummers, or “kukeri.”

They refused to meet up with the Deputy Mayor for Transportation, Lybomir Hristov, insisting that all negotiations will be futile prior to the municipality’s consideration of their demands. 

The Municipality should start accounting for all street repairs completed thus far and submit an action plan for the future so as to avoid the current haphazard “patching up”” of potholes,  stated some of the protesters’ central demands.

Sofia residents should be able to oversee and control the expenditures for street repair and the Municipality should provide every year public reports with these expenditures, specified further the main organizer of the event, Tsvetan Fikov. 

Representatives of  Sofia Municipality announced earlier in the day that they will propose to the protest’s organizers to directly partake in the process of overseeing street repairs.

“Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova sees a resolution to the current street problem in a major redoing with asphalts of the entire Sofia street infrastructure and will make sure to make the appropriate allocations for repairing at least some of the streets in next year’s budget,” stated a press release to the media from the Municipality. 

“Holes have no colors,” replied Fikov  to the question whether the protest is connected to a certain political party, referring to his alleged affiliation with the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).  Mr. Fikov is a former employee of BSP’s “Public Relations” department, and some of the writers in the protest’s official site dupka. net  (aka. “hole” in Bulgarian) are members of the BSP-affiliated “Discussion Club for Local Politics.”     

The organizers attributed the poor turnout at the event to the poor weather and to the fact that the protest was held on a working day. 

A larger national  rally, following on the heels of similar local initiatives held in Veliko Turnovo and Varna since the beginning of  March, is announced to take place in front of the National Assembly on March 22th.  At the national rally, the protesters plan to officially submit their demands to the Bulgarian government. 

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Tags: Potholes, protests, Yordanka Fandakova, sofia, Sofia Municipality

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