On March 17, Sofia cleaning concessionaire Novera, owned by Equest investment fund, presented its new global positioning system (GPS) designed to track the movement of the cleaning trucks.

Novera executive director Emil Georgiev showed how the new system worked to journalists at a press conference held at the Sofia Inspectorate. He said the company had more than 300 trucks, 98 of which are already equipped with GPS. The new system is able to track the route, location, speed and efficiency of garbage trucks.

It could not track how much refuse was collected, if any, that being the main bone of contention between the concessionaire and the city hall.

Equest was still developing the system, Sofia Inspectorate system administrator Stefan Petrov told The Sofia Echo. Some developmental difficulties still surround the software itself, which needs to match Sofia's conditions, in particular the requirements of city cleaning.

The system is being implemented in two stages, the final version of which will be finalised by Novera at the end of 2008. The second stage involves installing indicators on lorries, which would also show the number of collections. Video supervision is also planned for the second stage.

Georgiev said that they already have some data about collections but it cannot be released as they need to conduct an analysis. Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov said that until the new system is fully operational it would be difficult to monitor refuse collection.

“Now the system works well enough, but afterwards we will be able to fine tune it,” he said. He added that Sofia municipality and Novera relied on the public to monitor violations, so that those who break rules can be punished.