Prison and court employees protest in 18 cities in Bulgaria (update)

Hundreds of employees of the prisons and courts staged rallies in 18 cities of Bulgaria on June 3.

The protests are being held in front of the respective buildings of the Ministry of Justice at their places of work under the slogan "We Continue the Protest" and will not in any way hinder the work of the structures and units where they are being held, the trade union said.

In some places, officers from the Ministry of Interior and the fire fighting system joined the protest of the prison wardens. The demands are higher wages, better working conditions, reforms and an end to dubious public procurement.

At 16.00 representatives of prison workers were invited to a meeting at the Justice Ministry.

The meeting should make it clear whether there will be a big protest on 12 June.

Prison workers said that their demands have been the same for 13 years but there has been no response. They want salary equalisation in the security sector, as well as additional appintmnets of staff because there has been shortage of staff after the 2015 lay off.

Every government starts with an analysis, but real reforms have never happened. So overtime is piling up, there are people who have 180 days of untaken leave because there is no one to substitute for them during leave. At the same time, not many are willing to start work, because the starting salary is BGN 1 200.

The protesters are also dissatisfied with the working conditions - old computers, posts in a miserable state.

"Nothing has changed. At the root of the problems is the undignified pay of the employees in the security sector," said Venelin Enchev, secretary of the prison workers' trade union.

"We are demanding at least a 25 percent wage increase," Blagovest Pilyov said.

"The quality of the uniforms is poor," said Junior Inspector Zhelezchev.

Our working conditions are like those of detainees," said Junior Inspector Kazimir Atanasov.

"There is just under 300 million BGN in the budget that can be used to increase the salaries of administrations if they make optimisations and structural reforms. We do not foresee additional funds. We are talking about an average pay increase of 15 to 20 percent," Deputy Prime Minister Assen Vassilev said.

At today's question time in Parliament, Assen Vassilev said that there are several systems that have started the requested optimisation that will benefit from the fund. These are the defence system, the Ministry of Interior, 4 - 5 other ministries and the Council of Ministers, but he did not specifically mention the security sector.

Images by Dessilava Kulelieva