site.bta Road Hauliers Block Border Crossings with Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece in Protest over Long Waits and Delays

Road Hauliers Block Border Crossings with Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece in Protest over Long Waits and Delays

Sofia, October 31 (BTA) - Road hauliers blocked six checkpoints on Bulgaria's border with Turkey (Kapitan Andreevo and Lesovo), Serbia (Kalotina), Romania (the Danube bridges at Vidin and Rousse) and Greece (Kulata) for two hours on Monday in protest over long waits and delays at the border crossings, the organizers of the protest said at a BTA-hosted news conference also on Monday.

The five organizations that stage the protest were categorical that it is not politically motivated but is intended to make the competent institutions take the measures necessary for an improvement of the conditions for hauliers when they wait to cross the border and shorten the waiting time. They gave the institutions one month to solve the problem definitively.

The hauliers said they have to wait between 12 and 24 hours on the average in extremely bad conditions. Apart from social and humanitarian, the problem is also economic because, in their estimate, it costs the Bulgarian economy daily some 300,000-400,000 leva in direct losses and about 1 million leva in indirect losses.

"We want faster border control. Just as we pay our taxes, we want our business to move," said Georgi Raichev of a freight transport company for Northern Bulgaria. Speaking at the protest in Rousse, he explained that he is incurring losses on truck vignettes, extra daily wages for the drivers and costs of idling the vehicles.

Truckers who travel to Bucharest twice a week complained that they have to wait for seven hours to cross the border.

Speaking in Bourgas, Transport Minister Ivailo Moskovski said that the protest of road hauliers is not politically motivated and that their demands concern the operation of the Customs Agency and the Border Police. Moskovski said that the Transport Ministry has tried to assist them but the problems are not because of the Bulgarian institutions.

He added that a few weeks ago there had been a meeting of road hauliers, the Customs Agency and the Border Police but no decision was reached. "Apparently, the road hauliers did not see an adequate reaction," said the Minister.