Cable Theft Leaves Bulgarian Foreign Ministry without Phones

The building of the Bulgarian Foreign Affairs Ministry in downtown Sofia. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry has been left without phone communications for over 24 hours after someone attempting to steal wires cut a cable.

The incident happened Sunday night and the BTK telecom is working round-the-clock to repair the damage with the hope communications would be restored at some point Tuesday.

The information was reported by the Bulgarian daily Trud (Labor), citing BTK.

The stationary phone hub of the Ministry is the main connection with Bulgarians in the country and abroad, the crisis and visa centers, and with embassies. The satellite lines used by diplomatic missions in emergency situations also pass through the hub.

Due to the disconnected cable, all diplomatic communications were done via email Monday, but this had been interrupted as well over a power outage.

Employees of the Ministry report the outages have been a frequent occurrence lately, and explain it with the overload triggered by the use of electric heaters. The central heating has been stopped over budget cuts.

Employees, cited by Trud, have complained not only from the dark and the cold, but say power outages also lead to the halt of all security systems of the visa and crisis center while the cuts did not allow to update to anti-spam and anti-virus programs of the office email.

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