The prison reform that went from 24-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts is not working. This was commented by President of the Management Board of the Union of Prison Employees in Bulgaria Yasen Todorov. We remind you that yesterday we published the first part of our interview with him, in which he commented on the case of the release of Head of the prison in Lovech, Senior Commissioner Rozalina Ganekov.
The move to a 12-hour work regime is taken from a recommendation of the European Committee against Torture (ECT), Todorov said. According to him, this recommendation also says that prisons should be filled with more guards who should be trained and worked with.
„There are other recommendations, but they caught the most innocuous one that does not cost anybody in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) anything, but it is entirely on the backs of the employees because they start travelling twice as often to work – as we have expressed many times, these employees work in remote locations, some travelling as far as 80km from where they live and when they started work they were told that their work schedule was 1 day to 3 rest. Everyone has calculated what budget they will need to get to work. Currently, they work day, night, in some places – 2 days off, and in others – 3 days off, but when we add the external hospital facilities and when we add the people who have to work extra because they don’t have enough hours on this schedule, it turns out that everyone works 20-22 times a month, which if we count it for 12 hours, it comes out more compared to a person who works the same days, but for 8 hours. In such a case, this overtime was generated entirely by the shoddy management,“, explained Todorov.
According to him, this reform should have been analyzed and seen if it will lead to something. However, it was introduced for a month and a half in all prisons without any preparation.
The Union of Prison Employees did not take down their protest readiness, announced as early as 2022, but they wanted to gather more information and make it clear what was happening.
„When we say in April that last year they used vacation and this year they haven’t, and when we say that last year there was overtime and now there is overtime, actually this reform will prove ineffective. This reform for us has occurred in order to be punished for removing corruption, for removing public procurement for clothing and food, and for fighting to have normal working conditions and normal pay at the moment.“, Todorov said.
Over the past years, there have been numerous attempts to introduce the reform in question, and each time it has been ineffective, he noted.
„They did it in Plovdiv. This approach did not work, and although it did not work it was done in three more prisons in the following week. They had to punish bosses in Plovdiv because they didn’t get the job done at 12 o’clock. And even though they didn’t get it and they punished them, they got more employees to switch to that schedule.“
Yasen Todorov does not hope that anything will change before a minister with a clear mandate is appointed. On this occasion, he clarified:
„We say there is a problem with 12-hour shifts. The minister meets with all the chiefs. They say there is no problem. Accordingly, this information is conveyed to the media that all employees are satisfied and there are no problems. At the same time, our mail and the groups we hold with the activists and the presidents, people are so nervous, the number of sick people has increased.“
The President of the Union of Prison Employees shared a striking case where a job candidate who won the competition approached them to ask if this reform was temporary or permanent and when he found out that it was permanent at the time he refused to start work.
