Although the snow was removed from the large streets and intersections in Bucharest, mayor Gabriela Firea is not happy with the way things are on the sidewalks and side streets.

Thus, she found some help for the companies in charge of removing the snow in the capital: the inmates and gendarmes will take the snow from the sidewalks and the secondary streets. Firea announced the measure on Monday morning at the winter commandment organised to assess the situation in Bucharest after the heavy snowfall at the end of last week.

“When it comes to the much-discussed snow removal actions taken for the sidewalks and side streets, we will contact the minister of interior, the minister of justice, and the general manager of the National Administration of Penitentiaries in Romania, who will support us with prisoners and gendarmes so that we can manage to remove the snow on sidewalks and secondary streets in a much higher percentage than the one registered so far, of about 40%, which is considerably higher than in previous years,” Firea said, reports local Mediafax.

This is a solution of crisis, the mayor added, as the sanitation companies will have to make sure they meet the imposed requirements and remove the snow from the secondary streets next winter.

The inmates and gendarmes will remove the snow only from the sidewalks and secondary streets that are not the responsibility of sanitation companies or home owners’ associations that have a legal obligation to ensure snow removal on their areas.

On Friday evening, the day when the blizzard and heavy snowfall hit Bucharest and part of Romania, Firea also announced that she would call for a General Council meeting on Saturday, to dismiss the management of the Bucharest public transport company RATB, as she was not happy with the way the company managed the snow removal for bus and tram stations. The RATB management was dismissed on Saturday.

Moreover, the general manager of the Colentina Hospital in Bucharest was also dismissed on Monday, January 9, because half of the hospital’s patients stood in the cold on Sunday, according to Gabriela Firea. She said that this was not a problem of Bucharest thermal energy distributor RADET, but “an internal problem caused by the lack of management, the lack of revision,” reports local Digi24.

The weather will continue to be extremely cold in Romania on Monday and Tuesday, with Bucharest and 36 counties being under an orange alert for extreme cold. 

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com