Prof. Atanas Tasev, energy expert, has criticized the governing body of Bulgaria's biggest coal-mining company, the Maritsa Iztok Mines, for making a highly injudicious wage commitment.

In an interview for Standard Daily published on Monday, he says that the executives of the company "committed harakiri" by pledging to provide pay rises proportional to the workers' productivity.

According to Tasev' s calculations, if coal output was 25 million tons at the beginning of the year and rose to 32 million tons by the end of the year, the average salary in the company should be BGN 2000, not BGN 1500, and the workers should get bonuses of BGN 5000 each.

He says that the coal-mining firm obviously needs to replace equipment and to introduce organizational changes but the talks on the matter should be held in the summer.

The strike at the Maritsa Iztok Mines, which started on January 15 at at 8 p.m., ended on January 22 as the miners were given bonuses BGN 200 to their salaries.

The 7100 employees of Maritsa Iztok Mines AD insisted that they be paid bonuses of BGN 1000 for the record output achieved in 2011 in line with an agreement signed on July 12, 2011.

The syndicates at Maritsa Iztok Mines AD demanded that the employer comply with the document regulating the relative share of the wage costs in relation to the company's revenues.

They claimed that CEO Evgeni Stoykov had withdrawn his signature from the agreement despite the anticipated BGN 500 M in revenues of the company, thereby leaving the miners without year-end bonuses.

The management of Maritsa Iztok Mines AD, on the other hand, said that it had fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement and declared the strike illegal.

Tensions escalated on Friday, when Energy Minister Traicho Traikov said Bulgaria would stop exporting electricity at 01 a.m. on Saturday to compensate the coal supply disruption.

Traikov further described the activities of the protesters as a "blackmail and sabotage", which the syndicates firmly rejected, saying that the government was to blame for the stalled negotiations.

In his interview for Standard daily, Tasev adds that the activation of the cold reserve at a thermal power plant is very expensive and there are no guarantees against an immediate breakdown.

To illustrate his point, he says that the situation resembles a vehicle which has stayed in the garage for a year.

The Varna TPP, the second biggest TPP in Bulgaria, had to activate its cold reserve last week to respond to the strike at the Maritsa Iztok Mines.

The expert further says that it is unprofessional to talk about building a seventh unit at the Kozloduy NPP because the reactors are built in pairs to ensure better endurance.

Tasev suggests that scrapping the Belene NPP project to start work on units 7 and 8 at the Kozloduy NPP will entail a delay of no less than 5-6 years.

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