The Bulgarian Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev issued an order Thursday for developing additional security measures in Bulgaria's trains, including a total ban of smoking.

The order also envisages increased control over the type and the weight of the baggage of the train passengers, informing the passengers about what to do in case of fire or another incident, and improving the communication between the train staff.

The increased safety measures also deal with the evacuation ways, the use of the emergency break, the fire-extinguishers' spots in the train carriages, and the door closing and opening systems.

Rightist critics commented that most of these measures that the Transport Minister proclaimed one week after the Sofia-Kardam train fire tragedy, which killed nine people, had already been in place but had not been strictly executed.

Minister Mutafchiev himself admitted that there was a ban of bringing flammable objects onto the trains but that no one controlled whether it was observed. He announced that the new measures would be implemented with the help of the police for the time being but that a better control system had to be created in future.

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