Prison guards and staff protested across Bulgaria. Their demonstration took place at 09:00 this morning in front of the detention facilities. The Chairman of the Management Board of the Union of Prison Employees in Bulgaria, Yasen Todorov, who arrived for the discontent in Burgas, commented to journalists:
“The requests have been made for years. These are among the problems we encounter in our work. In some places we are short of equipment. After changing the working mode from a mixed mode to a 12-hour shift, it turned out that there were not enough guards in places. There are fewer colleagues than posts. This is not everywhere, it is observed in some of the prisons. A problem that also turned out to be that, with this composition, the employees of some of the prisons cannot use their annual leave. There is no composition to provide them with the regulated breaks for the duties such as rest for physiological needs, lunch or dinner.”
Among the other accumulated problems are the constant going to work, although prison officials were promised a regime of their activity, namely – day shift, night shift, 3 days off, according to which overtime should not occur, but in reality in the absence of people, employees start to be called on vacation and an extraordinary shift occurs again, added Todorov. According to him, we are not working with the employees and in the direction of their professional training.
Todorov is adamant that there is no dialogue with the Ministry of Justice, and from there they have categorically stated that there will be no salary increase.
According to the chairman of the Prison-Burgas Trade Union Hristo Georgiev, the main problems are related to the poor working conditions and the lack of interest of the General Directorate and the Minister of Justice in all the demands of the employees. According to him, the meeting at the ministry was a simulation of a dialogue, and the trade union is insisting on such a dialogue, but a constructive one.
“The 12-hour shift means an increase in costs for one employee, including travel and transportation. One employee gives between 300 and 400 BGN for transport. With this reform, we were promised to be on 2 working days on 3 days off. However, this does not happen and it turns out that we work every other day – 1 day we work, 1 day we rest. I’ve been like this for a week now. This creates tension in the squad and he cannot rest”, Georgiev added.
He believes that aggression against prison officials is also a problem.
At the protest there were also representatives of the Trade Union Federation of the employees of the Ministry of the Interior. Gennady Tenev from the local union is adamant that they support the protest.
“Naturally, the Union Federation of Employees in the Ministry of the Interior supports the protest and the demands of our partners from the Union of Prison Employees in Bulgaria, as things are similar and the problems are almost identical. The manner of their creation and their reluctance to solve them are also identical”, he commented to Iskra.bg.
It remains to be seen what the unions will do next and whether their protests will continue.
