THE NEW LAW ON WASTE MANAGEMENT ALLOWS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE ARBITRARINESS

The new Law on Waste Management is extremely bad - it contains no expert texts, and, in its current form, it will provide ample opportunities for administrative arbitrariness and corruption. The law was created without the participation of businesses, which means that the Government does not respect their expertise potential, representatives of professional organisations for recycling, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, said on Wednesday, cited by BGNES.

"What worries us is the fact that our businesses are the most restrictively regulated in Bulgaria. There are no such great limitations in ferrous and non-ferrous metals anywhere in Europe," said Borislav Malinov, Chairman of the Bulgarian Association of Recycling (BAR). According to him, this was done in order to reduce theft, but, so far, thefts have decreased by 30%.

"Nevertheless, we work in an extremely hard environment - we have a bank guarantee, fines for the slightest violation amount to between BGN 30,000 and BGN 100,000, they can take away your licence for the smallest thing," said the Chairman of BAR.

According to Malinov, this pressure on businesses will cause the establishment of illegal sites and will increase theft. He said that 1,600 of the 2,300 recycling sites that worked last year will be closed, and about half of those closed will continue to work illegally. This is a normal process, these people have been working in this business for 20 years, they have nothing else to do, he added. However, this will lead to further thefts and we will have to forget about everything we have fought for so far, the Chairman of BAR explained. One of Malinov's suggestions for a positive change includes the bonding of bank guarantees with the capacity and turnover of sites for recycling.