The bus of the travel agency "Besa Trans", which caught fire yesterday and took 46 lives, did not have a license, ie was not registered for international passenger transport, but according to the director of the State Transport Inspectorate Rufat Husseini, is not the cause of the accident. He pointed out today at the morning briefing that in order to improve the quality of passenger transport, it is necessary to buy newer vehicles, which will be technically correct, and for the Ministry of Interior to take care of that, and for the technical inspection stations not to register defective vehicles.

- We do not know when the bus was purchased and when it was registered. We also do not know why he did not apply for a license. According to the Law on Road Transport, the Customs Administration at the border crossings has the authority and must return the carrier, if it does not have a license. If the bus really did not have a license at the Deve Bair border crossing, it should not have been allowed to leave the country. However, I think that this omission did not affect the accident. The competent authorities in Bulgaria cite the road conditions, the correctness of the vehicle and the human factor as the causes of the accident. No one mentioned the license statement. "It should still be there, we will check why it is not there, but that is not the deciding factor in this accident," Husseini said.

Carriers that organize international long-distance transport should have two or three drivers. Often the carriers themselves try to circumvent this rule.

- Each bus is equipped with a digital tachograph, and each driver has a tachograph card that records the driving time of one driver. Every company has an obligation to download the data for each driver every 28th day of the month. It is not possible to manipulate this data, although it often happens that drivers drive with other people's cards. With the Law on Working Hours, every driver can work nine hours a day, but we do not have such long distances across the country. There is specific software for controlling such surveillance. We are equipped with six software and as many inspectors. International transportation is a bit more complicated. If we go from Skopje to Vienna, there is a driving plan and the same plan states how many drivers there should be on the bus. But manipulations are made. If there should be three drivers on the bus, it is often lied that one driver is waiting for him in Belgrade or Zagreb, and thus crossing the border. "If a violation or violation of the law is found, the violators will be punished wherever the violation is found," Husseini explained.

He says the accident was not a sufficient cause to revoke Besa Trans's transport license.

- In order to revoke a license, the company should not have a sufficient number of drivers. For example, if they have ten buses, they should have ten drivers. We will supervise in "Besa Trans" and depending on what will result from the supervision we will submit a proposal to the Ministry of Transport to revoke the license. In 2021, we conducted four inspections at the Deve Bair border crossing, but apart from non-compliance with the covid protocols, no other irregularities were found, said the director of the State Transport Inspectorate.

According to him, the biggest problem is the insufficient number of inspectors.

- The biggest problem is that we do not have a sufficient number of inspectors. We currently have 12 inspectors, which is not enough to supervise all companies that transport passengers and goods. Due to that, the inspection suffers. From this bus accident and from the accident near Laskarci we learned that the situation in the whole country should be improved so that there are no such accidents. This means that the companies should have better and newer vehicles, and if they do not have them, the old and defective vehicles should not be registered, ie they should not be able to pass the technical inspection. Responsibility should not be sought only from the Transport Inspectorate but also from the Ministry of Interior and the technical inspection stations, adds Husseini and emphasizes that so far it has rarely happened that the vehicle is overloaded, ie more tickets are sold than it has capacity.

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PHOTO + VIDEO | LIVE: All information about the serious traffic accident in Bulgaria