Bulgaria Socialists Said to Undermine Key Highway Project

Bulgaria's Regional Development Minister, Rosen Plevneliev, is pictured here during the signing of the contract for the construction of a new stretch of the Trakiya Highway. Photo by BGNES

The construction of a section of Trakiya Highway, which will be given the go-ahead on Monday, will lag behind schedule due to the behind-the-curtain games of the opposition Socialists, a minister from the center-right government has said.

“Mladen Chervenyakov is surreptitiously orchestrating the appeal against the selected supervisor of the project,” Regional Development Minister Rosen Plevneliev alleged on Monday in the morning broadcast of the state TV.

Chervenyakov, a lawyer, former minister and current member of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, is said to have deliberately undermined the project by submitting the appeal in the very last minute.

“This only leaves the impression that somebody is trying to delay this very important project,” Plevneliev said.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov will launch the construction of a section of Trakiya Highway, linking the city of Stara Zagora and the town of Nova Zagora, with a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday.

Bulgaria’s tie-in "Unified Highway Trace" won the tender for the construction of the new 32-kilometer-long section of the Trakiya Highway at the end of February and a month later signed a contract with the Bulgarian Road Infrastructure Agency.

The Bulgarian consortium submitted the lowest bid - BGN 137,86 M – in competition with three other approved applicants. 4 000 jobs will be created by the project in the Stara Zagora region.

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