Measures taken by the Interior Ministry should reduce the number of illegal border crossing attempts.
In the first eight months of this year, there were 2,395 cases of illegal crossing attempts registered at the Croatian state border. According to Interior Minister Vlaho Orepić, the daily monitoring of illegal migrations on the border with Serbia in the last two months shows that there has been a substantial increase in attempted illegal crossings, reports Glas Slavonije on September 9, 2016.
Instead of wires and fences, the Interior Ministry has opted for sophisticated protection of state borders: more than 50 million kuna will be spent on radars and modern video surveillance systems at 13 locations on the border.
The systems for the protection of state border will be located at the train station in Tovarnik, an antenna pole in Principovac near Ilok, at Radoš also near Ilok, in Sotin, Babska, Šarengrad, on a Vupik silo near the Danube, in Borovo Selo, near Strošinci, in Nijemci, and near the Bajakovo border crossing. Similar equipment will be installed at the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in Split-Dalmatia County. The systems for border control will be comprised of a thermal image camera, night vision camera, dome camera, a radar and a recorder, while computers for control of the border will be installed at local control centres located in nearby police stations.
The Ministry has issued a public tender for the equipment, and the estimated value of the procurement is 50.7 million kuna. The equipment will be installed at locations where the inflow of illegal migrants is the largest. In Serbia, there are currently around 4,000 migrants waiting to cross the border.
Measures taken by the Interior Ministry should reduce the number of illegal border crossing attempts to a minimum, and also prevent smugglers to earn huge amounts of money by transferring migrants. Minister Orepić said that the deployment plans of police officers and equipment, in accordance with the risk analysis, confirmed that there was still no risk of reactivation of the Balkan route.
According to the Minister, Croatian border police is ready to respond to an increase in border crossing attempts with its personnel and equipment, along with other government agencies.
