Bulgaria’s Ombudsman Maya Manolova filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court against a provision in the Water Supply and Sewerage Services Act concerning the formation of water prices, her press office said, quoted by Focus News Agency.

The provision according to which the utility companies can apply a single price of water and sewerage services within a single territory breaches the rule of law in the country’s constitution, and does not fulfil the legislator’s obligation to protect the consumer, Manolova said.

According to her, this approach is socially unfair and unbalanced, it does not take into account the public interest and the rights of the consumers. In her words, the increase in the water price is unfair because it would neither lead to improvement of the quality of the service nor of the quality of the water. Citizens, according to her, are sponsoring water and wastewater companies that can afford losses and leakages, because it is the consumers who foot the bill.