Ing. Petar Borov is 84 years old, continues to work and proposes to raise the retirement age first to 67 and then to 70! And the working day should be 6 hours. The former mining engineer of “Gorubso” has written collections of poetry for children, collections of mining poetry and economic books such as “Bulgaria – Belgium in the Balkan Peninsula”. In the latter, he draws a comparison with four 20th-century countries: Belgium, Finland, Greece and Bulgaria, and provides ideas on how the country could develop much more successfully.
Engineer Petar Borov spends his days in his small copier office opposite the technical university. There, everyone can find the old man buried in internet news and data, while he writes his next book or responds to emails. For those unfamiliar with the 84-year-old, the show is highly unusual.
His life is like a Jack London story. As a young man he graduated from a military school and while working as a border officer he studied engineering and political economy. He was kicked out of the army by some “ex-guard” and suddenly became a miner.
“I became a miner out of nowhere – the wind took me there. Previously I served as an officer for 7 years. That’s why I am so critical of the army, and I personally saw what “broken command” was during the period of the Soviet Union,” says the engineer.
He was fired from the army and the mine was nearby. He was unable to start work there because the Ministry of the Interior gave him one hour to leave the border area. This is how he started as a concrete worker in Kremikovtsi. A boy there said to him:
Money is scarce here: let’s become miners!
At that time he was just studying, he took his exams and went to the mines.
“That’s how I became a mining engineer and a miner – not that I’ve dreamed of it since I was a child! My father is a miner… only the wind takes me there. I entered the former mines of Atanas Burov for the first time” , recalls Petar Borov. Graduated in political economy in 2 years instead of 5. “That’s why I say I graduated not with 6, but with 12!” I worked as a planner in the mines for a month until they told me what my salary would be. When I learned that it would be 80 BGN, I immediately grabbed the pickaxe and ran to the slaughterhouse: there I took 4 times more,” recalls Petar Borov.
In his book “Bulgaria – Belgium on the Balkan Peninsula” Borov draws a curious comparison between our country and three other countries. The comparison with the small country between Germany, France and Holland was first made by Konstantin Stoilov – our prime minister after Stambolov. With Finland and Greece 100 years ago, we are almost on the same economic level. Now, however, these two countries have come a long way and Finland even surpasses Belgium. Engineer Borov used data from the book of the British economist Angus Maddison “Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century”.
“I explain how the wolf can be full and the lamb whole
If I am Prime Minister, I will immediately raise the retirement age to 67 and reduce the working day to 7 hours. Soon after I raised the age to 70 and the working day to 6 hours. Many places talk about a 4 day work week. I don’t have the institutes to research what will be more effective,” admits engineer Borov.
Urges our rulers to learn from countries like South Korea and Finland. The engineer recalls that due to the war with communist North Korea, the entire southern part of the country was completely destroyed. “In 1950, Korea was far below us, and now it lives twice as good as we do. Progress in South Korea began with a dictator who had served the Japanese during the war,” says engineer Petar Borov .
He says that having worked for 25 years in “Gorubso”, 13 thousand people worked at the Burov mines, at the Kardzhali Lead-Zinc Combine. 3 thousand of them were officials. “If Gorubso were my company, there would be 5,000 workers and 500 office workers for the same production,” says the engineer.
The engineer says that the Bulgarian economy has always been “miserable” – both in the times of the Coburgs, and in the times of the “First”, and even today in the times of the “One percent”. “We have an economy, but talking nonsense like in 1990 about the fact that we fed Europe is complete nonsense! I calculated that even if Jesus Christ came down, with the wheat we produced, he would not be able to feed Europe ”says Borov.
The engineer calls
create an “Economy of Added Value”.
According to him, private capital cannot create such an economy because it is not interested. Petar Borov is not talking about a return to communism, but about the state as one of the capitalists. There is something similar in France and Russia. On the one hand the system works well, on the other it doesn’t.
“The state would create a plant for the production of 20-30 thousand light cars under western license. It would have to have western technology and western salaries – an average of 3,000 euros. The cars will be competitive because the state will sell them without intermediaries. So the prices are lower by 20%,” engineer Borov calculated.
His notion that the plant is state-owned and will be operated independently by the president and prime minister is rather utopian. Borov wants to create a public council for the economy. He will lead the contests.
His other idea is the creation of a social bank that would lend up to 50,000 levs to the poorest Bulgarians. Like any communist, Ing. Borov is not very aware of what will happen when the “poor Bulgarian” becomes insolvent and who will pay for this lost money. “The state will force him to repay the loan – will provide him with a job and somewhat violently, as they say: ‘So meek, so good and so malko kotek’, he will take the money. If he doesn’t want to work voluntarily, he should be sentenced ”said the engineer categorically.
For many years Petar Borov worked on the family farm in Tsalapitsa. There he lived on 10 acres of land. His publishing house “Imeon” is now in the office with copiers. The name comes from the text of Michael the Syrian where he says that the Bulgarians came from this mountain.
No response from the statesmen
After printing his book “Bulgaria – Belgium in the Balkan Peninsula”, he sent it to Boyko Borisov, President Rumen Radev, then President of the National Assembly Tsveta Karayancheva, Tomislav Donchev and Ivan Geshev. I have not received any response from them.
“I put it down to the fact that they can’t read. The president and I went to military schools, but there we were not taught to read, but to follow combat orders. And Boyko Borisov and Geshev went to the police academy and didn’t even teach them to read,” says the engineer.
Eliminate the accusation in one fell swoop
Engineer Borov’s ideas for justice reform are quite curious. He wants judges to be elected by society. “I am introducing the institution of the ‘Public Observer’ – he will supervise justice. Literate people will be elected in each settlement and will be independent. They will meet the requirements of the jury and participate in every case. They will not interfere: this is supervision without interference”, He says. He also suggests that the prosecutor’s office be completely liquidated. “He should be joined in the investigation, because he’s the weak link,” he adds.
