site.btaInterior Minister Demerdzhiev: Turkiye and EC Appreciate Bulgaria’s Help

The Turkish Consul and Ambassador, officials and just regular people from Turkiye express their profound gratitude, as did the European Commission, which appreciates the extent to which Bulgaria is helping according to its capacity, caretaker Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev told journalists in the southern city of Plovdiv, commenting on the assistance Bulgaria is providing in the form of rescue teams to search for survivors and humanitarian supplies. This help will continue, the Minister said.

Tents, chairs, tables and other materials needed in such a situation are to be sent. Those commissioned at national level will be sent by the two Spartan aircraft, while local collected batches will be taken by transport companies that have undertaken to do so, Demerdzhiev said.

The Bulgarian rescue teams will remain in the affected areas as long as there is a chance of finding people alive. “We are fortunate to be among the first who managed to pull people alive from the ruins,” Demerdzhiev said. He pointed out that instructions have been given to the rescuers to take care and do their best to save and help more people. He congratulated volunteers from Plovdiv who took part in the search after the earthquake and found five survivors.

Taking a question how the fence along Bulgaria’s border with Turkiye will be funded, Demerdzhiev said the EC had been quite clear in its support and even intended to launch a pilot project on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. The debate about the border and its funding continues, he said, adding that he hopes to convince the EC at a forthcoming conference on border protection in Athens that fences should be used, as they are on the borders of a number of other countries. This cannot be funded by the member countries with external for the EU borders alone, Demerdzhiev said

In Plovdiv Demerdzhiev attended the report on the local Interior Ministry regional division’s activity in 2022.