Bulgaria's Interim PM Demands Reports from Each Ministry in 2 Weeks

Caretaker Prime Minister Ognyan Gerdzhikov has required of his cabinet to present reports on the state of each ministry in not more than two weeks.

During the first meeting of the interim government, which took over last week, he has called on ministers to pull themselves together "to the maximum".

"I will not say it like Churchill, blood, toil, tears and sweat. There is no doubt very serious work is ahead of us," Focus News Agency quotes him as saying.

"We are not like a regular cabinet, with a four-year timeframe, ours is a 100 meter sprint. This means the beginning is exceptionally important, a tenth of the second can be fatal."

His demand for reports on the state of every ministry comes after he promised last week that the cabinet would look into all actions and deals pursued by the previous government to check for irregularities, tenders included.

"We promised over the past days to unveil malpractices and abuse," he has recalled, adding the reports should go hand in hand with specific recommendations how the flaws are to be addressed.