site.btaEmergency Road Maintenance Procedures to Begin Next Week

New public procurement procedures for facelift repair and emergency maintenance of national roads (as opposed to municipal roads) will be launched next week after the former caretaker government discontinued BGN 4 billion worth of road repair and maintenance procedures, Regional Development and Public Works Minister Andrei Tsekov told a news conference on Tuesday.

Tsekov presented his deputies, saying that his team should protect the assets of the ministry and exercise control over the resources placed in its charge.

He said: "Between BGN 2.5 billion and BGN 2.8 billion was allocated to the Regional Development and Public Works Ministry annually over the years, which was supposed to be spent on building road infrastructure and carrying out public works in the municipalities. Our main tasks are to use a transparent mechanism for control of expenditures and provide fair co-funding for EU-financed municipal projects."

Tsekov said funding will be extended in stages, not in a lump sum, and not in advance.

"We have inherited a bad legacy as far as the building of Bulgaria's road infrastructure is concerned, because there is no comprehensive strategy to serve as a basis for awarding contracts for the construction and maintenance of national roads," the minister complained. He estimated that the writing of such a strategy would take between 12 and 18 months. "It is about time we stop working piecemeal and adopt a comprehensive strategic approach," Tsekov said.

He spoke about two projects in Northwestern Bulgaria which will be completed by the end of next year: the road between Mezdra and Botevgrad will be upgraded, and an expressway will be built between Vidin and Montana.

Discussing the Kresna Gorge section of the Struma Motorway in the southwest of the country, he said the option approved by the former caretaker government is not a good idea. "We will launch a procedure for a second carriageway along the eastern slope of the Kresna Gorge," he said.

The maintenance of the Hemus Motorway from Section 1 to Section 9 was assigned to state-owned Avtomagistrali for the period from 2019 to the end of 2021 without a public procurement procedure, which is contrary to the Public Procurement Act, Tsekov said. He added that the one-year deadline for terminating the respective contracts was missed.

In trying to find a way out of the situation with Hemus, the incumbents have set up a working group in the National Assembly, which has a month to propose a solution. The minister finds it outrageous that contracts for a routine activity such as road maintenance were used for overhauls instead.

Tsekov recalled that, given the apparent haste at the beginning of June in selecting road maintenance and repair contractors who would absorb the above-mentioned BGN 4 billion in funding, he grew suspicious about the transparency of the process, and on June 13 he ordered an audit. The audit showed substantial procedural flaws: the wording of the assessment methodology was vague, the procedures were conducted in a non-transparent manner, and the circle of eligible bidders was limited for no valid reason. Overall, seven or eight provisions on public procurement were violated. Based on the audit reports, all procedures approved by the caretaker cabinet were discontinued on June 14.

Tsekov said: "We must protect the public interest by using the budget of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works efficiently and transparently. We will waste no time, and next week we will launch public procurement procedures for a facelift and emergency maintenance of the national road network, with the price offers being the main criterion."