ZAGREB, July 19, 2018 – The Croatian government on Thursday adopted a regulation to reorganise ten existing police stations into border police stations for the sake of achieving the level of technical preparedness needed to join the Schengen area of passport-free movement, and it also restored wage bonuses for police employees, which, Minister Davor Božinović said, had been unnecessarily and unfairly cut a few years ago.
The police stations of Imotski, Vrgorac, Gruda, Hrvatska Kostajnica, Ilok, Tovarnik, Županja, Vrbanja, Vrpolje and Korenica will be reorganised into border police stations for the sake of meeting obligations from a 2018 evaluation of compliance with technical criteria for accession to the Schengen area.
The government also proposed merging the maritime police station in Zadar and the airport police station in Zadar into a single police station, as well as the merger of the border police station in Donji Srb and the police station in Gračac into a single border police station, to be based in Gračac.
A total of 45 new jobs of police dog handlers will be introduced to meet the need for stronger external border controls, said Božinović.
Two new organisational units will be established – the mobile border police unit South and the mobile border police unit East – to be set up at the Dubrovnik-Neretva County Police Department and the Vukovar-Srijem County Police Department respectively, as part of the border police force in the two counties, said the minister.
Two new units will be formed at the Ministry of the Interior as part of the National Coordination Centre and Risk Analysis Service for the purpose of provision of accurate and timely information to all services in charge of external border control. “This restructuring will help make additional progress in meeting the requirements in the field of external border control, which is crucial for meeting conditions for accession to the Schengen area,” said Božinović.
The government also adopted changes to regulations on police employees’ wages, on police employees’ job classification, and on police jobs with an accelerated retirement scheme, with the minister saying that the changes were in line with the main regulation on the reorganisation of police services.
Among the changes are those that restore bonuses on police employees’ wages abolished during the term of former Minister of the Interior Vlaho Orepić of the now opposition MOST party. “We propose restoring to the previous level police employees’ wages that were unnecessarily and unfairly reduced a few years ago, by 2-4%. This increase will refer to 6,300 police employees with university qualifications,” said Božinović.
A total of 6.7 million kuna has been secured for that purpose through the re-distribution of Ministry of the Interior budget funds, while an additional 1.1 million kuna has been secured for an increase in wages of the special police squad.
Božinović and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković thanked police officers for having done a good job on providing for security at last Monday’s event at which the national football team, the World Cup silver medallists, were welcomed in Zagreb upon their return from Russia, and they thanked citizens for the event’s dignified atmosphere.
