The Sofia Mayor and leader of the GERB party Boyko Borisov announced Wednesday afternoon he saw a connection between the official release of the EC reports on Bulgaria and the garbage crisis in downtown Sofia.

Earlier on Wednesday it was announced that a number of the workers of the concessionaire firm, which collects the garbage in four downtown Sofia districts, had left to work at construction sites on the Black Sea coast, and as a result the company was unable to perform its work.

According to Borisov, the Sofia Municipality had made all necessary provisions for the collection of the garbage, and had paid all its dues to the concessionaire.

In his words, someone deliberately paid the workers of the Novera firm to leave their jobs before the release of the EC reports in order to leave Sofia buried in trash.

Borisov pointed out the workers, who were mostly of Roma origin, were first told the garbage-collecting firm was going to go bankrupt, and that their salaries would not be paid. After that, they were offered jobs at construction sites along the Black Sea coast.

The Sofia Mayor announced he had spoken to the Director of the State Agency for National Security Petko Sertov asking him to order an investigation of the whole case.

"I called Sertov, and he has already ordered an investigation who told the Roma the rumors about the bankruptcy, and who provided them with jobs on the Black Sea. And all this coincides with the day of the official release of the EC reports on Bulgaria", Borisov explained.

He added that later a picture was taken of a jeep driving around downtown Sofia with people placing posters on the piles of trash, which read "Guaranteed by GERB".

GERB is Borisov's party, and "Guaranteed by GERB" is its slogan. According to the Sofia Mayor these were dirty tricks performed by the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which aimed to discredit him and the GERB party before the upcoming Parliamentary elections in 2009.

Borisov made explicitly the point the municipal administration was not to blame for the garbage crisis, which he claims was deliberately orchestrated.

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