BULGARIA’S GOVERNMENT ALLOCATED 10 M BGN FOR THE VILLAGE AFFECTED BY THE TRAIN BLAST

The Bulgarian government allocated 10 million BGN (about 5.1 million euro) to assist the village of Hitrino, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said at a special meeting of the Cabinet on 12th of December. 5 million of the money will be transferred to the accounts of the municipality for clean-up actions and the remaining 5 million will be given to the Labour and Social Policy Ministry for assistance to the families affected by the train blast.

The meeting of the cabinet was held two days after the explosion of a derailed cargo train carrying gas tanks, that left seven people dead, 29 injured and flattened a large number of houses and other public buildings in the village of Hitrino in North-Eastern Bulgaria.

By Friday, Hitrino municipality, supported by experts from the social policy ministry, will prepare an assessment of the needs of each household, the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev, finance minister Vladislav Goranov and labor and social minister Zornitsa Russinova said after the special meeting of the government.

The hopes are that over the next one-two years, everything that was damaged in the blast-hit area will be fully recovered.

Preparations are taking place to accommodate residents, whose houses were destroyed, into temporary homes.

26 homes have been completely destroyed and need to be built again.

The European solidarity fund can not be used in this case, but money would be transferred under other operational programmes and the one for rural development and the programme "Transport and transport infrastructure", which will be approved in the quickest possible way by the European Commission.

Estimates show that the reconstruction of the damaged railway infrastructure will cost 1.5 million BGN.