Less than a quarter of BiH border crossings meet standards

After the alarmingly poor working conditions of the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BP BiH) prompted Saša Magazinović, a representative in the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH and President of the Main Board of the SDP, to raise this issue in parliamentary benches, the first reactions have arrived, reports the Patria agency.

Following a letter of thanks from the director of BP BiH for raising this issue, as well as support from the union confirming the poor conditions under which border police officers carry out their daily activities, Magazinović received an official response from director Zoran Galić to the questions he had posed.

The response states, among other things, that the state of infrastructure, equipment, and material resources for conducting border checks and surveillance of the state border, as well as conditions for performing work tasks of BP BiH police officers, is regularly analyzed, and that less than 25 percent of border crossings meet infrastructure standards.

At only 20 crossings out of a total of 83, there are conditions for quality and efficient border checks, while at the others the situation ranges from “poor to non-existent.”

Furthermore, as stated, the responsibility of the Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA BiH) is indisputable, as it is legally responsible for the construction, expansion, reconstruction, management, and maintenance of facilities and infrastructure at border crossings.

Responsibility for placing flags, as stated in the response, also lies with ITA BiH, while the task of the Ministry of Transport and Communications is to place signs and other traffic signals marking the border crossing and its area.

- I thank Director Galić for the response. The situation at our border crossings is clearly alarming, as are the working conditions of border police officers. If this is the situation at official border crossings, imagine then what our capacities are for fighting various smugglers and all those ready to exploit the obvious porosity of our border. After this information, we should not be surprised by the official information from the Council of Ministers claiming that drug prices in BiH have remained unchanged for years, whereby the state acknowledges the stability of this illegal market and currently admits defeat.

I sincerely hope that state institutions will wake up and change this situation, first and foremost the Indirect Taxation Authority, but also the Council of Ministers of BiH. It is a shame that border crossings, as the first image of BiH that people encounter when coming to us, are poor, and it is an even greater shame when we receive information that border police officers at some crossings do not even have a built toilet - Magazinović commented on the response from the Border Police, announcing continued activities on this issue.