The payroll of Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ) would be cut down by 1500 to 1600 people, the head of the railwaymen’s labour union, Petar Bounev, told a news conference on July 23 2008.

The staff redundancies come at a time when BDZ is already understaffed and, as a result, offering services of sub-par quality, Bounev said, as quoted by Focus news agency.

However, data from Kapital weekly's list of Bulgaria's largest companies showed that BDZ was the biggest employer in Bulgaria at the end of 2007, with 17 234 employees, followed by the National Railway Infrastructure Company (NRIC) with 16 697 employees. NRIC was split from BDZ in 2002.

According to Bounev, although all European countries encouraged railway transport because it was eco-friendly and energy saving, automobile transport was predominant in Bulgaria in the past 20 years. Countries like Austria allocated 1.5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) for railway infrastructure, while in Bulgaria the amount was 0.18 per cent, he said.

Railway unions said that BDZ employees would launch protests in September because of their low salaries.

The labour union said that the rising number of accidents involving railways over the past months were the result of inadequate investment in improving the infrastructure in the past 20 years.