Tegeltija: BiH Border Police have full support of BiH Council of Ministers

BIJELJINA, (Patria) - "The fact is that BiH institutions have not reacted adequately to the migrant crisis, that we were unprepared and that BiH has become a place with more migrants than Serbia, which is two or three times larger than BiH," said Zoran Tegeltija, Chairman of the BiH Council of Ministers, after a meeting with the Director of the BiH Border Police, Zoran Galić, in Bijeljina.

He pointed out that the migrant crisis is not only an issue for the Border Police, but for all security agencies. Tegeltija stated that the BiH Border Police, with the number of border police officers it currently has, cannot cope with the migrant crisis.

According to him, for more efficient work of the Border Police, changes to certain legal solutions are also very important in order to create better conditions for their work.

"Our common endeavor is to improve working conditions at the border, so that passengers and businessmen do not waste time at border crossings, because we receive many complaints that delays in BiH, both from Serbia and Croatia, are often too long and that border crossings are overcrowded. More attention needs to be paid to the Border Police, their staffing and technical equipment," Tegeltija assessed and announced that they will have the full support of the Council of Ministers in this regard.

Director of the BiH Border Police, Zoran Galić, said that they informed Tegeltija about the security situation at the border and the essential problems that burden this police agency, but also offered solutions for overcoming some problems. Galić praised the cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, whose 73 members are assisting the Border Police, as well as with police agencies at the BiH level.

"For the overall situation to be better for BiH, we must change legal and sub-legal acts on the go, because with the existing regulation, 85 percent of police officers work on controlling border crossings, and only 15 percent are engaged in monitoring the 'green border' along 1,603 kilometers," Galić said.

He stated that the BiH Border Police is short of 388 police officers.