site.btaMedia Review: May 2

PRIVATE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL PROJECT RAISES HACKLES

The Council of Ministers’ decision to approve the construction of the private Mom and Me Multiprofile Hospital for Active Treatment in Sofia dominates Thursday’s media, as it has sparked great public unrest. The decision of April 30 is related to the intentions of investor Commercial League - Global Pharma Center to build a private hospital in order to carry out treatment activities in 39 medical specialties, in 30 clinics and wards, with a total of 413 beds, wards without beds and laboratories for diagnosis and treatment of people both 0 to 18 years old and over 18 years old. A day later, on May 1, caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev ordered the cancellation of the decision for the establishment of the private hospital.

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The 24 Chasa daily frontpages the topic, saying that the Council of Ministers’ approval has survived no more than some 22 hours before cancelled by caretaker PM Glavchev, having met the discontent of the public, the parties and President Rumen Radev. The reason for the discontent is that the private project will derail the construction of a long-waited National Children's Hospital.

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On its frontpage, the Trud daily likens the construction of a children's hospital in Bulgaria to the popular tricky shell gamе. By its decision, the caretaker cabinet is trying to chicane the construction of a public children’s hospital, the newspaper says, quoting unnamed politicians and health experts. "Quietly, under the table, the caretaker government tried to push through a dirty decision to build a private children's hospital at the expense of the state one," the article’s lead reads. Caretaker Health Minister Galya Kondeva is going to be the scapegoat despite the fact that, according to some members of the Council of Ministers, such decisions cannot be taken without an order "from above", Trud further writes.

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Capital.bg also covers the topic thoroughly. It pays attention that this is not Commercial League’s first attempt to build a private hospital in Sofia. Three years back, GERB denied the conglomerate to build a large hospital in Kazichene (near Sofia), and later Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria did the same, Capital.bg rewinds.

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In a Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) interview, lawyer Maria Sharkova - a member of the Public Council for the Establishment of a National Children's Hospital, stressed that the decision to build a private children's hospital in Sofia was taken in the dark. "This decision was taken right before the long break of public holidays, in the dark, without any prior information, including information to the public about this yet another medical facility to be built on the territory of the city of Sofia, where, according to the recently adopted health needs analysis for the country - there is a surplus of hospital beds in Sofia, except for paediatric and long-term care beds," Sharkova said. In her words, а private hospital will not work in the public interest, in the interest of children and improvement of children's healthcare, but will work in its own private interest. The structures of a private hospital are usually made to function in a way to be more cost-effective. A private hospital would use financially advantageous clinical pathways, and accept less severe cases so it does not lose financial resources, Sharkova emphasized.

Sharkova also commented the topic in Nova TV’s morning talk show.

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Speaking on bTV, former Health Minister Prof. Hristo Hinkov noted that the solution to the case lies not in suppressing the private initiative, but in speeding up the construction of the state hospital. The National Children’s Hospital is a very old project of the state, which unfortunately is very cumbersome like all other state projects. The situation illustrates how a private initiative is much more flexible and fills gaps that the state cannot fill, Hinkov explained.

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On Bulgarian National Television's (BNT) morning show, former foreign minister Ivaylo Kalfin stressed that a caretaker government’s only task is to prepare and conduct upcoming elections. "This hospital issue is obviously some kind of lobbying story, and it turns out that the Prime Minister did not know about it. How is it possible for a Prime Minister to not know what does the Council of Ministers adopt!? That is not very clear either, but that is how, in some sort of a merry chaos, we keep going forward. Whatever passes - passes, whatever fails - we will try [to slip it] again," Kalfin criticised.

POLITICS

On BNT, the President's Legal Affairs Secretary Krum Zarkov blamed the caretaker cabinet for its first actions being inconclusive. According to the former Bulgarian Socialist Party MP, the country is in an institutional crisis. The caretaker government is in a difficult situation to control it because it has no clear responsibility and clear political backing and there are many doubts that there are various political influences on it. Zarkov, a former caretaker justice minister, added that the judicial reform has crashed. The prosecution has completely disappeared from the public space, he criticised.

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24 Chasa has an interview with Prof. Raina Nikolova, lecturer in administrative law and procedure at New Bulgarian University. Commenting on the cumbersomeness of the executive in Bulgaria, she says that it is composed of some 900 administrative bodies, of which some 130-140 are central bodies based in Sofia. "Imagine the state apparatus and facilities that Bulgarian citizens and businesses support with their taxes. These sole or collective bodies, in addition to implementing 250 laws, on their own grounds adopt some 3,000 regulations. They issue hundreds of thousands of administrative acts and penalize with thousands of penal decrees. When it comes to cumbersomeness, the general government has surpassed communist Bulgaria many times over. Which legal order is able to control all this!?," Nikolova emphasized, expressing her frustration.

ENVIRONMENT

Capital Weekly’s issue provides an extensive article on plastic recycling in Bulgaria. The story says that despite some problems in the chain of separate collection of plastic and plastic packaging in Bulgaria, plastic is indeed recycled. Despite the scepticism of many citizens, the short answer is yes, it is worth separating waste collection, Capital underscores.

And yet, the world of Bulgarian plastic remains full of absurdities. Recycling organisations that manage the waste segregation bins claim to be exceeding their recycling targets. Bulgaria has great opportunities for plastics processing and several large recyclers. For years, recycling organisations in Bulgaria have been working largely with foreign raw material and solving some of Europe's problems. And at the final straight of the plastic chain, there are also three cement plants that burn as RDF what is not recycled. So far so good. But then comes the absurdity. Even though all the units in the chain exist, Bulgaria’s landfills are filling up faster than planned and Sofia is getting close to a waste crisis. The separate collection system has not been upgraded for years and is not realising its full potential. Meanwhile, citizens do not believe that anything meaningful is happening with their plastic packaging, the weekly says.

According to Capital, local municipalities are the most inactive chain units. Their way of managing waste often supports the status quo and certain circles of companies profiting through garbage fees from different activities such as transportation or segregation. There is also political reluctance to change the way the garbage fee is set. This lethargy in waste collection can be solved by Brussels and its circular economy if Bulgaria is willing to go down the more complicated but more sustainable road.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

In a Trud interview, Merchant Captain Dimitar Dimitrov, President of the Confederation of European Shipmasters' Associations (CESMA), comments on the ongoing Red Sea crisis. He explains that the war in Ukraine, and especially the war in the Middle East, have exposed maritime transport to new challenges. In his opinion, a hitherto unknown risk has emerged - attacks and hijackings of vessels not by pirates but by a belligerent. For the past five months, the Iran-linked Yemeni Houthi rebels, who support the Palestinian militant group Hamas, have been holding captive the Galaxy Leader, whose captain and first mate are Bulgarians.

"The European institutions put the issue on their agenda for the first time after [receiving] a declaration from CESMA. However, we have no feedback on practical action taken, although we have asked. To my knowledge, the Bulgarian institutions are acting [on the matter]. We had a meeting with representatives of the Presidency, who were the only ones who responded and gave us information that everything possible is being done through diplomatic channels. The colleagues on board Galaxy Leader are hostages to the political situation in the Middle East, " Dimitrov explained.

CULTURE

On BNR, theatre director Lilia Abadjieva commented that the biggest issue of Bulgarian theatre is that it lacks development strategy. In her opinion, in order to reach a reform in the theatre that would satisfy everyone in the industry, a debate should be held. "I don't know if there is the will for one. We are the only country in Europe that has less than one percent of its [state] budget for culture," she emphasized. If theatre actors have no will, if there is no political will, there is no way to make any changes, Abadjieva stressed. In her words, it would be hard to find even some 100 people who would stand behind a certain cause. Everyone has their own understandings. The trade union does not behave like a trade union. The actors have to work in many places at the same time and it is difficult to have a fully-fledged rehearsal process, they travel almost every day, Abadjieva explained.