Kaolinovo Municipality is taking out a second interest-free loan to pay people employed under national youth employment programmes. Because the state budget has not been adopted, the municipality must advance more than €35,000 from its own coffers to cover wages and social security contributions for workers and their mentors under the “Youth Practices” project.
The project is being implemented under the Human Resources Development Programme 2021–2027 and is widely used by municipalities to provide temporary employment for unemployed people in smaller communities. Because it targets young people aged between 16 and 29, most of whom have little or no practical work experience, those hired are assigned mentors.
In Kaolinovo Municipality, five contracts have been signed with the Employment Agency, providing jobs and wages for a total of 100 people.
Under a contract signed on 24 September 2025, 34 people were employed. Half are mentors, while the others were hired as cleaners, general workers and two data-entry operators. The contract has been running since the end of December 2025.
Two contracts signed on 6 November 2025 provided jobs for two general workers and two mentors. Another contract, signed on 18 December 2025, provided employment for one street cleaner and one mentor.
The largest contract was signed on 31 March 2026 and provides employment and wages for 60 people. Half of them are mentors, while the workers they supervise include 14 general workers, 13 cleaners and three building maintenance workers.
All the contracts run for six months, as required under the project.
But because the Employment Agency did not transfer funding in April and May, Kaolinovo Municipality has taken out two interest-free loans to pay the workers.
The first loan was used to cover wages and social security contributions for March 2026. The municipality paid €15,089 under the contract from 24 September 2025, €1,109 under each of the two contracts from 6 November, and €1,089 under the contract from 18 December.
The second interest-free loan is intended to cover wages and social security contributions for May and June 2026. The total amount required is €35,064.
Under two contracts that are nearing their end, only €22 each is still due to be paid. The contract from 18 December requires €1,745 for May and June, while €33,275 is needed under the largest contract, signed on 31 March, to cover wages and social security contributions for April.
A legal way to provide municipal employees with extra payments
The figures show that European programmes have enabled Kaolinovo to provide employment in recent months for 50 workers and an equal number of mentors.
This is where the arrangement becomes particularly interesting for the local administration.
Mentors can only be appointed from within the municipality’s own structures – municipal administration staff or employees of municipal enterprises and units. According to experts from the Employment Agency, people from outside municipal structures cannot be appointed as mentors.
In practice, this means the project provides mayors with a completely legal mechanism for paying additional money to their own employees for “mentoring”.
In Kaolinovo, the mentors have been assigned to 23 general workers, 21 cleaners, one street cleaner and another five people working in more specialised positions, including building maintenance and data entry – whatever duties those positions actually entail.
What kind of mentoring is required to teach a street cleaner “professional skills” is largely a rhetorical question.
Under the project rules, however, mentors receive half the remuneration of the person they supervise – in other words, half a minimum wage.
Kaolinovo Municipality has published no information about the contracts on its website, so it is unclear whether the mentors are paid for a single month or for the entire duration of the programme.
Officials from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy have acknowledged that the Employment Agency is aware that the project offers mayors a perfectly legal mechanism for providing “rewards” to their administrative staff through additional payments.
“That is why they changed the conditions and required municipalities to continue the contracts at their own expense for another three months,” a social ministry official said.
P.S. Kaolinovo is not the only municipality to have applied under the “Youth Practices” project. Shumen Municipality has also submitted an application, according to sources familiar with the programme at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy.
