site.btaOpposition Calls for Removal of Road Infrastructure Agency Head, Minister Sacks Another Senior Management Member

The opposition Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) Wednesday called for the removal of the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) Management Board Chair, Yordan Valchev, after a deadly crash on a national road, believed to have been caused by the bad state of the road. Later in the day, Regional Development and Public Works Minister Ivan Ivanov said that another senior RIA official has been fired.

As he spoke to the parliamentary reporters in the morning, Andrey Tsekov, who is an MP of CC-DB and is a former Regional Development Minister, said his group wants to see Valchev removed "over dissemination of misleading information about the state of the national road I-3 section, in which a Bulgarian child’s life was lost".

Movement for Rights and Freedoms - New Beginning Floor Leader Delyan Peevski described CC-DB's call "an abuse of tragedy". "If investigators find fault, then there could be political accountability," he added.

Peevski argued that Tsekov and his family are "the brokers of all roads", to use his exact words. 

In a related development, the Regional Development and Public Works Ministry said that Minister Ivan Ivanov has asked the chair of the Managing Board of the Road Infrastructure Agency to dismiss the head of Road Infrastructure Maintenance Directorate and the head of the Repair Works Unit of the Pleven Regional Road Authority, responsible for the road section maintenance. 

The Minister himself later announced that the former has already been removed.