Farmers joined yesterday the ongoing strike of the railway workers in Bulgaria. Today, as it has been the case for the past six days, there will be no trains between 8 am and 4 pm.

The railway worker’s strike continues but if they receive an invitation for negotiations, they’ll be able to respond on Wednesday, said for Bulgarian National Radio Valentin Nikiforov, Vice President of the Confederation of Independent Syndicates in Bulgaria (CISB).

Until yesterday, the position of the Bulgarian State Railway Company was that it wouldn’t back off from the planned reforms – some of the measures including the laying off of 2000 staff and 150 trains.

Farmers however joined the protest of the railway workers because their subsidies for 2012 had been slashed by half by the Finance Ministry.

330 tractors from the towns of Haskovo, Stara Zagora and other towns in Southern Bulgaria have blocked the highway some two kilometers off the Kapitan Andreevo check point on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Farmers from Northern Bulgaria said they would block the international E-79 route.