Road hauliers cause traffic disruptions as part of a protest

Road hauliers on May 10 staged another national protest. It came after their meeting with Prime Minister Kiril Petkov last week ended without result. The road hauliers are demanding a 50% cut in fuel excise duty, abolition of the bio-component, and a postponement of the planned expansion of the toll system.

Columns of lorries and cars have disrupted traffic on junction roads in various parts of the country.

In Sofia, a column of heavy-duty vehicles has been forming since early this morning at the entrance to the city from “Tsarigradsko shosse” Blvd. The procession with the heavy-duty vehicles was planned to reach the city centre. However, organisers complained that they were not allowed to reach the central part of Sofia.

"At 9.30 am we had to start from here to go to protest on the yellow-brick road in central Sofia. Now it is 10.30 am and they are not letting us in and we think, this is the blackmail by the state to the united transport industry. Anyway we have a protest permit and we are going to the place of the protest. At the moment we are on two parallel lines with the government and I don't know if there will be an intersection anywhere in the future," Chair of the Union of International Hauliers, Yordan Arabadzhiev said.

So the protesting hauliers and their equipment remained at the entrance of Sofia, at the end of Trakia motorway.

"Our demands are economic. We have no political demands and we are aware that sooner or later, in order to achieve them, we have to sit down at the negotiating table," added Dimitar Dimitrov, Executive Director of the Chamber of Bulgarian Road Hauliers.

The Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works is adamant that it will not budge from its position on the extension of the scope of the road toll system.

"We are looking at the European example - 2/3 of the tolls collected are from heavy-duty vehicles traffic and 1/3 from private cars. That is the formula we are aiming for. At the moment we collect 270 million from passenger cars and the share of heavy goods vehicles should be twice 270," said Grozdan Karadzhov, Minister of Regional Development and Public Works.

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