Sofia garbage: Top court upholds scrapping of Zone 1 cleaning tender
The city halted the procedure after the only remaining bidder asked 340 to 370 leva per ton. A new tender with stricter requirements is to follow.
Symbolic image · Photo: 008all / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court has issued a final ruling that Sofia Municipality lawfully canceled its tender for waste collection and street cleaning in Zone 1, which covers the Sredets, Lozenets and Studentski districts, the city said. A final ruling is still pending for Zone 7, which includes Vazrazhdane, Oborishte and central Triaditsa. In August, the Commission for Protection of Competition also upheld the cancellation for both zones.
After bidders with "non-transparent" offers were excluded, only one bidder remained in each zone, asking 340 to 370 leva per ton. Instead of signing five-year contracts on those terms, the city scrapped the procedures. "We refused to sign long-term contracts under monopoly conditions," Mayor Vasil Terziev said. For now, the service continues under contract annexes at 209 leva per ton. The city will launch a new tender with higher quality standards, mandatory modern equipment, more mechanized cleaning and tougher penalties.