Another chilling breeze from the global crunch has reached Bulgaria, with the Minister of Transport Petar Moutafchiev announcing on November 20 that the Bulgarian state railways BDZ will make 1250 redundancies in order to unload some of the burden from the company and "optimise its expenses".

As a paramount reason for thinning the ranks of BDZ's employees, Moutafchiev pointed out the recent predicament of Kremikovtzi steel plant, which has been declared bankrupt. BDZ has registered over 23 per cent reduction of cargo traffic due to the inactivity of the ailing steel mills like Kremikovtzi near Sofia and Stomana Industries. which is in the industrial and mining town of Pernik.

Moutafchiev did not wish to state with exact figures how many people will face the prospect of being left unemployed, as no exact projections were made as of yet and because "eh situation is still very dynamic".

Regardless of whether there is a tactical plan for the future of the company or not, Moutafchiev has said that the redundancies will affect roughly 1300 people. "We will do everything possible to move those people to different sectors in the railways industry and find them alternative and satisfactory employment. Perhaps they can be allocated in the teams who will be tasked with the refurbishment and modernisation of the railways, as well as construction of new railway infrastructure around the country" he said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

He did not, however, specify when the redundancies will take effect.