In the little village of Novo Jelezare, in Bulgaria’s Thracian plain, the farmhouses are falling down and the grain silos rusting. At siesta time, the streets are deserted. No one comes to live here these days. With his grey moustache, Dimitar Gargov looks like an American sheriff. He works for local security firm Traffic SOT and sometimes patrols the village, when he’s not delivering food, medicine or winter firewood. ‘You could die here and no one would notice for months,’ he said, knocking at a door.
Penka Litova, dressed in mourning black, opened up. She moved here from a nearby village 20 years ago: ‘I came to look after my parents when they became ill. I’ve been alone for the last 13 years – my children are in the UK. There’s no public transport any more, and the nearest pharmacy is a day’s walk.’ Gargov and his team drive her to doctor’s appointments, which helps relieve the loneliness. Sometimes they deliver flowers. ‘They’re my surrogate family.’
‘They provide social services’
Bulgaria’s private security sector employs around 130,000 people (18 for every 1,000 of its population, compared to 2.3 in France and 0.7 in Italy), more than the police (29,000) and army (37,000) combined. Besides guarding public spaces and private homes, ‘they provide social services in hundreds of remote villages, especially since the pandemic,’ says Tihomir Bezlov, professor of criminology at the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) thinktank in Sofia.
It’s not just in sparsely populated areas that security guards seem to be everywhere. An hour further south is Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s cultural capital and second city. Tanya Georgieva, director of the local Red Cross centre, puts together baskets of basic foodstuffs, such as flour and cooking oil, and organises deliveries, some of which are handled by Traffic SOT. ‘They also help elderly people who live alone with bathing and official paperwork, and provide emotional support,’ Georgieva said. ‘If you call (...)
