2000 Bulgarian Railway Workers Receive Redundancy Notices

Image by Ivan S. Abrams

Not long after the day of celebration for Bulgarian railways workers a bombshell of layoffs are now in line with 2000 losing their jobs by the end of the year. In a day and age where railways should be improving their infrastructure and getting more investment as a green and economical for of transporting goods, the opposite is happening. They may call it streamlining, but to me it looks like the demise of the goods railway system in Bulgaria. I wonder whether this will be regretted years down the line so to speak.

Bulgaria’s national railway carrier BDZ will pension off or make redundant around 2,000 employees by the end of the year as part of a package of measures to counter the economic slide.

The company currently has 15,532 people on the payroll. The state-run National Railway Infrastructure Company, which maintains the operator’s infrastructure, reported a 20% decline in revenue and a loss of NHM 48 million for January to June, said general director Anton Ginev.

In an effort to curb the deterioration, the company will follow suit with pensioning off workers by the end of the year. BDZ executive director Hristo Monov pinned the bulk of the blame for the lackluster performance on the economic meltdown and the falling prices of ready-made products. More pressure came from the withdrawal of one of the company’s key customers, Kremikovtzi, which went insolvent. The carrier booked a six-month loss of BGN 22.3 million, where reduced passenger and cargo traffic contributed 82%.

Source: news.dnevnik.bg/