site.btaSplitting Rail Passenger Service among Three Operators Will Make It Less Effective, Trade Unionist Warns

The President of the Railway Transport Workers Union, Petar Bunev, warned on Tuesday that a planned reform in railway passenger transport in Bulgaria will cause fragmentation on the small domestic market and will thus make it less effective. The idea to hand over the railway passenger service from the state to three private operators simply means that a state monopoly will be replaced by three private monopolies, he argued.

Bunev took part in a public discussion on the planned reform. He noted that he was speaking on behalf of 15,000 workers in the sector.

He objected to the proposal that three private operators should service different parts of the country, leaving only one operator in each area. This, he said, would be practically the same as having state-owned BDZ as the only railway passenger carrier across the country. “When you go to a train station, you will not have a choice between operator A, B and C. There will be only one carrier along the route you want to travel,” Bunev explained.

The quality of the service will improve after infrastructure renovations are completed and train speeds go up, he said.

The expert noted that the market was liberalized in 2019. “Anyone can come along and offer a quality service at a reasonable price. It is all about the subsidy. Someone wants to carry passengers without making an investment,” Bunev said.

The discussion was hosted by Deputy Prime Minister and Transport and Communications Minister Grozdan Karadjov. He said that competition in railway passenger transport will raise the quality of the service.

On June 2, the Ministry of Transport and Communications put up for public coordination a set of terms and conditions for awarding a railway passenger transport contract. Before that, Karadjov had promised to discuss the details of the upcoming procedure with all interested parties before it gets underway.

On Monday, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) opposed the division of the country’s rail passenger service into three lots (geographical areas) and the allocation of each lot to a different operator. “We are against the division into lots and there is no reason, no requirement from anyone to do this - neither from the European Commission, nor under the Recovery and Resilience Plan,” CITUB President Plamen Dimitrov told a news conference. According to him, by dividing the service into lots it will not become better because of the small market and because of the splitting of the subsidy into three, which will lead to additional problems.