Third-class roads in Northern Bulgaria still closed after the snowfall

There are third-class roads in Northern Bulgaria that are still closed to traffic, Desislava Paunova, member of the Road Infrastructure Agency told BNT on November 28.

"The work is extremely intensive. On the territory of Razgrad district, where yesterday the situation was the most severe, the main roads are open to traffic as of this morning. We hope that within the day we will re-open the entire road network," said Paunova.

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Paunova commented on the viewers' signal to BNT that the road between Knezha and Byala Slatina has been blocked in both directions for two days. She explained that during the weekend, heavy traffic was suspended due to snowfall. According to the agency, as of 6.00 am today the road was re-opened.

"Compared to the situation that was on Saturday and Sunday, I think we did everything that was possible," Desislava Paunova responded to the criticisms.

"On Saturday night, the Trakia and Struma motorways were temporarily closed due to heavy trucks crashing and not complying with the bans. They turned around and blocked not only the movement of vehicles, but also the work of snow ploughs. The motorways were cleared and open to traffic for several hours," she said.

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Desislava Paunova stressed that numerous vehicles with summer tyres created additional difficulties for the traffic over the weekend and for the work of the agency.

"We witnessed multiple vehicles with summer tyres creating additional difficulties. Every single vehicle that got stuck meant us having to divert equipment to pull out the vehicle and only then resume snow removal," she said.

Paunova said that where work is not done, there will be penalties. She reminded that a week ago the Road Infrastructure Agency terminated the contract with BG NOVA, the company maintaining the national roads in the Bourgas region.

"We terminated the contract due to systematic non-performance of the contract, failure of the company and failure to perform the work assigned to them," Paunova added.

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