The heating utility in Bulgaria's capital Sofia announced it is ready to start providing heat to customers as of Monday if this is their wish.

"Nearly 75% of our customers pay regularly for the service, some 8% prefer to make just one installment per year and as that many have run into huge debts, amassed over five or more years," Stoyan Tsvetanov, director of the company, commented in an interview for the state radio.

"Toplofikatsiya" has reminded day care directors, school principals and the management of hospitals that they need to apply in writing with the utility if they wish to have central heating turned on in advance of the regular schedule.

For tenants and residents of apartment buildings, if they wish to have the heat on earlier, they need to also apply in writing and the application must have signatures from all households there.

This is done in order to prevent turning on the heat on individual requests without the knowledge and the agreement of other people in the same building.

"Toplofikatsiya Sofia" clients traditionally welcome the start of the winter season with mixed feelings as every year they have to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for the comfort of having a warm and cozy home.

The company, which has been in the news for more than four years after it was found drained to the brink of bankruptcy, provides heating to about 400,000 households in the capital Sofia.

Toplofikatsiya Sofia's debts to Bulgaria's state gas monopoly Bulgargaz currently stand at BGN 178 M.