Sofia Districts ‘Izgrev’, ‘Slatina’ and ‘Poduyane’ Left Without Rubbish Collection Contractor

The Sofia neighbourhoods of Izgrev, Slatina and Poduyane remain without a rubbish collection company after the municipality cancelled the public tender for garbage collection. How will rubbish be collected in these areas?

Following the districts of Lyulin and Krasno Selo, three more areas—Izgrev, Slatina and Poduyane—now face a waste crisis. The reason: the sole bidder withdrew from the process.

“It is, to put it mildly, questionable when you are the only participant—essentially a guaranteed winner—and you withdraw from the procedure,” said Nadezhda Bobcheva, Deputy Mayor for Ecology at Sofia Municipality.

Bobcheva added that the authorities are currently preparing several options and will hold discussions with the mayors of the three affected districts.

“None of them want their residents to pay higher waste fees, and I hope we can find a reasonable solution. One option is direct negotiation; another is to operate as we did in Lyulin and Krasno Selo,” Bobcheva said.

Boris Bonev, a municipal councillor from 'Save Sofia', welcomed the decision to cancel the tender for Zone 3.

“The fight against the mafia is important, but it must be conducted professionally, by those who are prepared. I very much hope that by the end of this process, it will not turn out that Terziev has been fighting the mafia, but rather battling the high costs imposed by the mafia. We want the municipality to handle waste collection. Only then can we ensure that unscrupulous economic interests do not plunder the municipal budget,” Bonev said.

Ivan Takov, a councillor from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), noted that the municipal company Sofecostroy still lacks capacity.

“We can talk about signing a contract with the municipal company, but it doesn’t have the capacity. We allocated nine million lev, but equipment and manpower cannot be arranged in such a short time,” he said.

Bobcheva also highlighted that the price proposed for Zone 1, covering the districts of Sredets, Lozenets and Studentski, was the highest so far—379 lev per household, excluding VAT. She described this price as unjustifiably high and said that alternative solutions are being considered.