site.btaPrison Employees' Trade Union Mulls Resuming Protests

Sofia, April 5 (BTA) - The Trade Union of Employees in Prisons in Bulgaria (TUEPB) is considering to resume the protests, it transpired on Thursday from an open letter that the Union sent the Prime Minister, the National Assembly Chair, the Justice Minister, the Prosecutor General and all parliamentary parties.

For several months, prison guards have staged protests to press demands for decent pay and normal working conditions, to which they say they are entitled as citizens of a State holding the EU Council Presidency. On March 21, after Prime Minister Boyko Borissov assumed a commitment to the allocation of extra funds for an increase of the basic monthly salaries at the Justice Ministry's Chief Directorates for Implementation of Penal Sanctions and for Security and equalizing the specific service pay with the Interior Ministry, the TUEPB called off the local protests it was planning in Lovech, Vratsa, Pazardjik and Stara Zagora for the period until March 25.

The letter was prompted by what it calls "the ongoing hysteria", probably over Tuesday's escape from the Sofia Central Prison of two dangerous convicts serving long custodial sentences. The prison guards insist on a mechanism for addressing the problems that would not be actuated by specific events or politicized, as is the case now.

The TUEPB believes that the current State policy at the places of deprivation of liberty is motivated mainly by the implementation of infrastructure projects and the absorption of EU funds and does not seek sustained and urgent solutions to the plethora of problems in this sphere.

The TUEPB has taken action for the protection of the guards who were attacked by the fugitive prisoners.

Talking to journalists in Parliament on Thursday, Justice Minister Tsetska Tsacheva said that the number of unfilled vacancies for prison guards has dropped from 480 last summer to some 200 now. Quite a few of them quit or transfer to another job after working for a couple of months. Tsacheva has ordered an urgent report on the needs concerning the human factor and the logistics at the places of deprivation of liberty. "Financial resources are not the only issue," she said.