The construction companies appoint the ministers in this structure. This was said to Iskra.bg by engineer Yasen Ishev, chairman of the management board of the Scientific and Technical Union for Transport. He pointed out:
“Tough, they define them! You know the saying: „He who pays, he orders the music! Construction companies pay themselves, otherwise I don’t see how things can be explained in any other way. I can’t prove anything at this stage though.”
“As soon as this money is saved, someone uses it, because it is paid to certain people and it goes somewhere. Who allowed shoddy construction, which is not only on those sections that were checked? All of the newly constructed roads are in urgent need of repair. The „Hemus“ highway should also be checked, and for the „Thrakia“ highway it is striking because it depreciates very quickly, which is unacceptable”, the engineer stressed.
According to the expert, the inspections that were carried out should have been carried out much earlier. According to him, it was necessary to carry out them also on the previous section of „Trakia“ highway from Chirpan to Stara Zagora, which is in an even worse condition. He expressed his opinion about the inspections carried out by the official minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ivan Demerdzhiev, and by the minister of regional development, Ivan Shishkov:
“I think that Shishkov did his checks quite precisely and clearly, and everyone before him did not do them. He and the Minister of the Interior actually had this courage because they revealed something that no one wanted to reveal, which could lead to the loss of funds for the whole of Bulgaria.”
After the question from Iskra.bg: Is the 12-year management of GERB the reason for the poor quality of the construction of Bulgarian roads and for corruption in this branch? He answered:
“Of course they are toxic. They infected the entire nation with a disease worse than COVID. It is very difficult to cure this nation of them. The recipe is, 100 people in jail.”
“As far as I know, someone was thwarting these checks because it was known what the outcome would be. It is not good and that is why our roads are in such a state. This is one of the reasons. The other reason is that the construction of our road sections is calculated according to some old norms from 20 years ago, which do not cover the heavier traffic that has been realized in our country in the last 10 years. We have data received from the Customs Agency, which shows that many excessive loads are entering the country. The carriers pay their fees but destroy our road network. Separately, our carriers also overload, but the control is understated. These are part of the reasons why the roads in our country are damaged”, Eng. Ishev explained to the media.
The road specialist emphasized that there are maintenance periods for the asphalt pavements, which “do not go that deep, but to improve their coverage of the asphalt layers”. He explained that “the top layer wears out, smooths out, where its quality of adhesion of the car tire to the pavement is lowered”, which increases the braking distance, giving opportunities for scuba diving, which leads to unpleasant consequences for vehicles and drivers.
“There is no refusal to test new roads. But timely checks can be made by the Construction Supervision and by the contractor himself. There are so many roads that are damaged and destroyed that need to be checked. There is supervision, there are construction laboratories that monitor. Let the builders know that they cannot save at least 10-15% on the construction of the pavements”, explained the expert. He pointed out:
“Until now, the construction laboratories that qualified the construction had close ties with the builders. The builders were proving things to themselves in their lab, where everything was fine, but in reality it was proven not to be. Here, as an example, is the road to Svoge, where it was proven that the project indicators that were set were not met. Low-quality materials are used. The fact is that someone taught the builders to work poorly, and the first reason for this is the lowest price, which should also guarantee the best quality. We know what happens when you go to buy something at the lowest price.”
“I see in this year some change and a desire for things to change. One of these changes is the new requirement of the „Road Infrastructure“ Agency – that the construction laboratory be hired by the Construction Supervision, which is responsible for the samples that are taken from the roads in our country”, concluded with a hope engineer Ishev.
