An open invitation to Ms. Yordanka Fandakova
euinside, January 5, 2010
It is exhausting to do one and the same thing each year in specific periods: snow falls and there you go - you start calling the mayor, the deputy mayors, the concessioners who operate the cleaning machines, you make inquiries with victims of the snow and ice, with people who are stuck in their cars, with drivers of the public transport and more and more. It is not just exhausting, it is indeed impossible to assimilate how is it possible this to happen every year! I've given up counting how many years in a row! Why?
This is the first question that I would like to ask the mayor of Sofia Ms. Yordanka Fandakova and to invite her to finally do what is necessary and call a press conference with the participation of all the above mentioned people: the mayor, the deputy mayors, representatives of the concessioners, representatives of the inspectorate of Sofia, regional mayors, etc. so that we could ask them at once and not each of the more than 100 media to call them one by one.
So, this year we've given up - we are not going to call anybody because we want results after all! Is the Treasury interested in our financial problems and how are we going to pay our VAT or the 
social securities? No, it does not care! And do we have to care about the problems of the concessioners, the mayors, their deputies, the inspectorates? No, we should not care! Why? Because we pay taxes, we have elected some people and we expect them to react immediately when they see that it is snowing - to organise the cleaning, the the spreading of salt, etc.
At 11 o'clock am our team saw that the machines that spread the salt were fully functioning but it is snowing since 7 o'clock in the morning! Many people wrote to us and sent us pictures, complaining that it took some of them between 2 and 4 hours to get to their work which is, please note, HALF A WORKING DAY! Has Ms. the mayor and her team ever given a thought about how much it would cost the business or the Treasury half a non working day? Or a whole day?
And more - we would like to ask Ms. Fandakova and her team if they would agree to accept our invitation and call a press conference - how many people are fined so far for not cleaning the snow in front of their apartments, offices and buildings, thus making it even more difficult for the pedestrians to move not only in the quarters but in the central streets as well? And how do they expect the laws to be implemented by themselves and not through effective rule of law each second, each hour, every day and so on? And the rule of law can actually be quite lucrative and quite motivating for everyone to do his job and not wait to the municipality.
The people that would go out and clean the snow in front of their apartments and houses are not too many. Instead, the people who cleaned their cars from the snow, nevertheless that they did not use them, were much more.
So, dear Ms. Fandakova, we will be very obliged to you if within 24 hours you call a press conference at which you give some explanations why, again, one and the same situation keeps repeating each year no matter who the mayor is, who the concessioner is, no matter how much it costs, whether there is money or not and etc. We, from euinside, are confident that it would be very useful for all of us if we could gather together to discuss and look for a solution to the obviously enormous problem.
Best regards, the small but effective team of journalists at the euinside.
P.S. In case there is no press conference, we will have to admit the sad conclusion, which is: all this is the result of the fact that the authorities in Sofia (and probably not only in Sofia) is incompetent, it lacks organizational and any other capabilities, has no institutional, human or intellectual potential since it cannot organise something as simple as cleaning the city from the snow. And this is even more ridiculous especially against the background of the weather forecasts, the news from the world telling us about Bulgaria's neighbouring countries and their problems with snow and ice which might lead us to the thought that this is coming here too. After all it would be quite embarrassing for us to remind that Emel Etem at least warned of coming snow when she was, first a minister for disasters and failures, and then as a minister of the special situations.