site.bta26 Municipalities Fighting Forest Fire under Sofia-Skopje Project 

A cross-border network for natural disaster response has been established under a project between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, involving 26 municipalities on both sides of the border.  The Cross-Border Cooperation in Forest Fire Fighting project concluded with a conference on Thursday. A number of volunteer units and professional firefighters have been trained under the project over the last two years.

The project was implemented by the Association of South-Western Municipalities (ASWM) on the Bulgarian side and the Centre for Development of the South-Eastern Planning Region of the Republic of North Macedonia under the Interreg-IPA program for cross-border cooperation between the two neighbouring countries.

Lyubitsa Tomova, executive director of the ASWM, said that the project involved mainly voluntary units on the Bulgarian side and professional firefighting services on the side of the North Macedonia. As a result, a number of trainings have been held, both in theory and in practice. In addition to the training programme, the project has established a cross-border network for response to natural and man-made disasters, and has supplied personal protective equipment and fire-fighting equipment. 

A Memorandum of Cooperation was also signed at Thursday's closing conference. Tomova invited everyone who is willing and recognises themselves in the objectives set in the memorandum to join and work in this direction within the next one month.

In the words of Zulieta Gjurgova, sector manager at the Development Centre of the South-Eastern Planning Region of the Republic of North Macedonia, this is one of the best projects for this period of the Interreg-IPA programme and the work between the two countries, and it creates the basis that facilitates future volunteer trainings.