Bulgaria’s printed media informs on Friday about the multiple technical failures at Sofia’s central heating company Toplofikatsiya which left thousands of citizens without central heating for several days. Some headlines of the Friday’s newspapers read: “Municipal councilors suspect that the technical failure at Toplofikatsiya is due to sabotage”, “The central heating company is telling lies- it invests in hollow projects instead in the central heating pipeline network”. Nobody is willing to name the real reasons for that technical failure, but the Sofia municipal councilors assume that it may be due to criminal negligence, intentional sabotage or even vandalism, Sega daily comments on Friday. That is why Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova has asked the Prosecutor’s Office to make investigations and internal audit at the central heating company. However, the newspaper notes that last week the specialized Anticorruption department with the Prosecutor’s Office already initiated inspections at Toplofikatsiya following a signal of Bulgaria’s Ombudsman Maya Manolova about huge expenditures made on legal services and lawsuits against debtors. The State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission and Bulgaria’s Ministry of Energy have also ordered a series of inspections. The money collected from central heating bills is spent on projects with low significance, Monitor daily contends. Based on statement of Bulgaria’s Ombudsman Manya Manolova, that newspaper claims that the central heating company has been spending money on other less important projects and that in 2016 the company has replaced only 1.4 kilometer-long pipelines in Sofia, whereas it had to replace 30 kilometer-long pipelines of the central heating networks, in order to fulfill the initial plans.

The central heating network in Sofia is nearly 900 kilometers-long. If Toplofikatsiya keeps changing the old pipes at the current pace, the central heating network will be fully renovated in 500 years, Bulgaria’s Consumers’ Federation commented. It is quite paradoxical that even if the Prosecutor’s Office ascertains some legal violations at Toplofikatsiya, that company may not pay compensations to its consumers who were affected by the recent technical failure. That is so, because according to the general terms and conditions of the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission, a company owes compensations to its clients, if it fails to resume its service in the course of 48 hours after a given technical failure and if that company is proved guilty about possible technical failures.