site.btaMedia Review: September 17

ECONOMY

A new institution called National Water Board (NWB) held its inaugural meeting on Tuesday in implementation of a parliamentary resolution of September 3 concerning the adoption of urgent measures to address the water crisis in Bulgaria, the media report.

Duma says on page one that Deputy Prime Minister Atanas Zafirov will head the NWB. Zafirov, who also leads the Bulgarian Socialist Party, is expected to be elected to the new post by the Council of Ministers at its weekly meeting on Wednesday. The daily quotes Regional Development and Public Works Minister Ivan Ivanov: “Our goal is to get out of the deadlock. The National Board will add clarity, sustainability and consistency to water management. We think there is enough funding and expertise available.”

Meanwhile, journalists continue to report water supply problems in various parts of Bulgaria.

Nova TV and other media said that the curse of water rationing has reached the north-central town of Lovech, and the chief of the local water-and-sewerage company has resigned. Lovech Mayor Stratsimir Petkov told Nova TV that the local government has worked well with the company, and the replacement of its chief may be a political decision. He described the water rationing scheme as “bearable”, with water supply interrupted between 11 PM and 6 AM. “Over the course of a year, we managed to reduce considerably the amount of water necessary to meet local demand, to 90 litres per second compared with 130 litres per second in 2024,” Petkov said.

The Bulgarian National Radio correspondent in Pleven reported that Regional Prosecutor Vladimir Radoev has ordered daily checks for possible unlawful use of water in this northern area, where water scarcity has been a particularly serious problem for years. The checks referred to by Radoev started last week. They are aimed to uncover illegal connections to the water mains and failures to report water metering data.

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“Trapped in the Elevator,” headlines the leading story in 24 Chasa, which says that Bulgaria is among the world’s top three nations in terms of number of elevators per capita, but here, these machines are in deplorable condition. According to Nikolay Marinkov, Secretary General of the Bulgarian Lift Association, an estimated 80% to 90% of elevators in this country are unsafe. Most of them were made using standards and technologies that were current between 60 and 70 years ago. At the time they were made, they already posed 33 risks to people’s health and life, which were admissible by the standards of the period. Nowadays, modern elevators can stop functioning due to their safety mechanisms.

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Home-based wine production is targeted by the government again in a proposed new law on wine and spirits, Trud says in its main story. The bill seeks to establish a rule whereby only vineyard owners can make wine at home, and to reduce the maximum permissible amount of home-made wine to 500 litres annually. Offenders will be fined between BGN 1,000 and BGN 3,000. No major changes are envisioned for home-based production of rakiya (Bulgarian brandy). As before, a household will be allowed to distill 30 litres of rakiya annually for consumption among its members. The drink should be produced from grapes or other fruits grown by the household. Excise duty will continue to be charged on home-made rakiya.

POLITICS & SOCIETY

“Curtain Falls on Dogan Era,” caps a signed analysis on SegaBG.com. It says that the former longtime leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Ahmed Dogan, who used to be one of the leading political figures in Bulgaria, is obviously not coping well in the new political reality. His party has gone into the hands of Delyan Peevski, and now Dogan is building a new political entity in rather unfavourable circumstances, the analysis goes. According to the author, the only advantage of the Doganists is the face and the name of their leader, but it is difficult to say whether this still matters.

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The 24 Chasa daily comes with a 72-page supplement dedicated to the Bulgarian capital Sofia, which celebrates its holiday on September 17. In the supplement, Mayor Vasil Terziev says that Sofia is becoming “modern and green”, with more kindergartens and boulevards, an expanding underground railway system and an increasingly accessible Mount Vitosha. The articles cover a wide range of topics. One of them says that the average Sofianite is a well-educated 42-year-old individual who owns a home and has a family, works in the field of information technology, outsourcing, trade or finance, and earns an average wage of BGN 3,489 per month.

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Psychologist Ivan Igov has been interviewed by 24 Chasa in the opening week of the new school year. Igov says that teachers and students have a great workload to bear and find themselves rushing through the school subjects, which demotivates the kids. He suggests that Bulgarian students, like their peers in Finland, should be taught how to solve so-called case tasks – for example, how to make a pencil, or other real-life challenges. While working on case tasks, the kids should be taught to ask the right questions; the answers will often be readily available, Igov says. He stresses the importance of civil education in schools. The psychologist argues that aggressive behaviour does not exist in a school where the students know all their teachers by name.

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“Bulgaria: The Place Where Women Age Alone,” runs the headline of a MediaPool.bg. story. It says that a growing number of women in Bulgaria step into old age in solitude, not because they have chosen to but because life has left them without a partner. Among Bulgarians who are in their 60s, women significantly outnumber men. As at December 2024, the country’s population was 6,437,360, and there were 1,080 women for every 1,000 men, so generally, Bulgarian society is not beset by a gender imbalance, but this is true only until age 55, the website says.

The article was created under the PULSE project, an EU initiative supporting cross-border cooperation among journalists. Juste Anceviciute (Delfi, Lithuania) and Voxeurop (France) contributed to the article in addition to Mediapool.bg.

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A ninth-grader from a sport school in the southern town of Haskovo fired a gas pistol during the long break at the school on Tuesday. The incident has been covered by various media outlets, including BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, according to which no one was wounded in the incident. The shot was fired out of a classroom window in the presence of other students. Head teacher Silvia Tencheva said on the channel’s morning talk show on Wednesday: “I literally took him by the hand and led him to the security guard. We then reported the case via 112 and the gun was confiscated.” She noted that the school has no metal detectors for body scanning and security checking, but this may change.

According to bTV, the 16-year-old offender and the adult man who gave him the pistol were arrested. The prosecuting magistracy has instituted pretrial proceedings over hooliganism. The boy may face, on conviction, up to two years in jail, or probation and a public reprimand.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Arab affairs expert and university professor Vladimir Chukov spoke on BNT1’s morning talk show about Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip which are going on despite growing international criticism. Chukov commented: “The Isarelis just have plans, schemes, which they follow. That is why they keep going in spite of all appeals and criticisms.” He highlighted the recent UN General Assembly vote in favour of implementing the two-State solution between Israel and Palestine, pointing out the diverging views even within the European Union.

Chukov said that the Egyptian press described as “historic” the speech of the country’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during the Doha summit, where Sisi publicly referred to Israel as an “enemy” for the first time. The professor recalled that Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel in 1979. He warned that the Palestinians in Gaza are under pressure to go south, and what follows after “south” is Egypt, which means that Egypt may face a serious humanitarian and political crisis. “Egypt has said on more than one occasion that some of the Palestinians may be made to head for Europe, if necessary. This has put pressure on countries such as Germany to recognize the State of Palestine,” the expert said.

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The war in Ukraine is heading to its inevitable conclusion, according to an article by Ted Snider in the Washington-based magazine The American Conservative, also published in Bulgarian in the Trud daily. Snider says it may still take many months, but Russia will win the war on the battlefield, and Ukraine will be without some of its territory and without NATO membership. In such a situation, Kiev has every incentive to make a deal rather than wait for crushing defeat.