“Every time “Continuing Change” participates in the executive branch, the issue of public procurement for road construction and road repairs becomes a hot topic. Why? For many years, road construction has become a political business, not a public service activity. . This is an indisputable fact. For decades, road construction has been awarded under conditions of minimal or almost non-existent competition”. This was commented by the Minister of Regional Development, Andrey Tsekov, in the program “On Focus” on Nova TV on Sunday.
“No government is legitimate just because it has political support around it. For a government to be legitimate, it must be useful for the Bulgarian citizens. If the government is not useful for the Bulgarian citizens, then it has no meaning,” he commented he too, when asked if his work could blow up the administration.
The minister said that efforts will be made to return competition and transparent procedures.
“I have never heard the name Babakov, I have been in Moscow on private visits as part of the team of a private company, several times between 2000 and 2013. TurkStream is being built between 2019 and 2021,” said Tsekov, who reiterated that does not know the Russian minister in question.
The minister also commented on the financial inspection of the orders for road repairs commissioned by the “Petkov” office. “Contracts for 700 million for current repairs, concluded between 2019 and 2020, were checked. The report found that 90 of the jobs were basic, not current repairs, which cannot be done with such a contract,” the minister explained.
“These objects are illegal constructions, this was established during the time of the official cabinet. That is, according to some contracts concluded between 2019-2020, 710 million were spent on illegal constructions,” said Minister Tsekov.
He also responded to the accusations of former minister Nikolay Nankov.
“At the moment and in the last more than a year and a half, Bulgaria has not concluded contracts for road maintenance. During the official office, contracts were concluded for winter maintenance, i.e. for snow removal and for emergency repairs of varying value. For Varna, for example, 11 million BGN, for Sofia – about BGN 30 million. According to these contracts, winter maintenance was carried out for the last season. The total value for the whole country is about BGN 140 million. During the rest of the time, the Road Infrastructure Agency, in contrast to the subject of the contracts, carried out ongoing repairs, i.e. patching of holes, such as cannot be contracted under these contracts. And what we have ordered is that such activities are not to be carried out in violation of the law, but to wait for the conclusion of the new contracts for current repairs,” said Minister Tsekov. He said winter clean-up was partially secured for most of the country.
There have been announced public procurements, but they appealed.
“I think there is a political motive (for the appeal, b. r.). I don’t want to get involved with which party this comes from,” said Tsekov.
