EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
"I agree that it's absurd, but what can I do? The RZI gives us some lists and we break our legs going from house to house. I'm writing to you that you're not here because you're not here," the policeman tells me on the phone. He's standing in front of my apartment door, but I'm not there, and accordingly he's calling me to confirm and write that I'm not at the address I gave for quarantine. We both agree that it's absurd, but he still notes my absence and warns that stupid or not, they'll probably try to fine me soon. When I try again to explain how stupid the situation is, the policeman hangs up.
The absurdity lies in the fact that I am not under quarantine at all. I entered Bulgaria across the border 12 days ago. The rules are simple: if you don't have a test, you enter a 10-day quarantine. If you then take a test and it is negative, you send a stamped report from the laboratory to the relevant RHI and you are out of quarantine. This is what happened: I sent a test done before entering the border, but with results that had not come out at that time, and I spent about five days of the 10-day quarantine. After an understandable delay given the situation, I received a report that I was released from quarantine.
The absurdity, of course, is not only that, in addition to sending me a protocol, the RZI forgot to remove me from the quarantined list. It is also absurd that a police officer comes to check on me on day 12 of my 10-day quarantine. The entire conversation we have on the phone, in which the Ministry of Interior employee explains to me that there is no way he can write that I am there, and I tell him that I don't want that from him - he simply shouldn't care where I am at all. It is also absurd that in the end, the state will probably even have to pay money - to me and everyone else in this situation, and they are probably not a few - without even having any legal case. It is also absurd that this will be done with taxpayers' money, of course.
This is what Bulgaria's bureaucratic hell looks like in the context of coronavirus, thousands of sick people and even more thousands quarantined. The RHI is angry with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and puts people under quarantine, and even if they come out of quarantine (or it ends), the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs still have to "break their legs going to homes", after which if there is no one at home - which is normal at 11 am, by the way - they write that the person is not there and in all likelihood it leads to fines, which will then end up in court and the state will have to pay at least lawyers' fees. By "the state" I mean us.
This is not a catch-22, this is reality. There are several possible explanations for it: the system is overloaded and is already completely inadequate; the RHI and the Ministry of Interior are so poorly coordinated that not only do they not know who to check, but they also cannot count the days; the bureaucracy in Bulgaria has finally faced a situation in which it needs to show some real administrative skills, but simply cannot; because of everything that is happening, the institutions refuse to work with each other, and the losers from all this are the citizens.
The answer lies in all of the above, and not only that. The RHI and the rank-and-file police are just a low-level reflection of what is happening higher up. None of this should surprise us. Just a few days ago, Health Minister Kostadin Angelov announced on television that he had warned "that this is what would happen," as if someone else should have prepared for all of this, not him and the institution he represents. The country's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov ordered that there be a "van and a professor" in front of every hospital. The chaos and the impossibility of even something as simple as the list of quarantined people being up-to-date can hardly surprise us. At least we all agree - it is absurd, but what can be done.
