Power cut to trolley bus lines in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv
Electricity distribution firm EVN Bulgaria has cut power to the trolley bus lines in Bulgaria’s second-largest city Plovdiv after the company operating the lines has failed to pay its 18 000 leva debt, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported on October 23.
A day earlier, EVN said in a statement that it has notified the city’s privately-owned public transport operator of its intentions.
This is the second time that public transportation in Plovdiv has been disrupted in as many months. In September, the city hall transferred funds to the company, owned by businessman Angel Batakliev, to enable payment of arrears salaries owed to the company’s employees, who went on strike on September 24 and 25 saying that their salaries had not been paid in full for about a year and a half.
The municipality also sent a letter to the firm notifying it that its trolley bus contract was being terminated because of breach of contract, acting on an earlier warning from August, when it said that it intended terminating the trolley bus contract because since the beginning of 2012, only about a quarter of the trolley buses were serving their routes.
The municipality’s 2004 contract with the firm specifies that the contract may be revoked unilaterally if less than 75 per cent of the trolley buses are running.
Batakliev blamed the city hall’s stopped payments for failure to pay EVN. He told BNT that Plovdiv municipality did not have the right to unilaterally terminate the contract and he would sue the city hall.
(Photo: John Nyberg/sxc.hu)
