The number of police officers in the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina is 54 percent, confirmed the director of this state agency, Mirko Kuprešaković.
285 are retiring
After the amendments to the Law on Police Officers of BiH updated the situation in the state police agencies and their staffing, Kuprešaković claims that the current shortage of personnel affects the work of the Border Police, and he expects the situation to worsen next year.
– We lack 1,305 police officers. It is a huge lack of the human factor. Next year, 285 police officers will retire, so the occupancy rate will probably be below 50 percent – said Kuprešaković for “Avaz“.
Since his appointment as director, the Border Police has announced four competitions for the admission of 150 police officers, of which cadets from the 11th and 12th classes are already working, the 13th is in training, and the competition for the 14th is underway. However, it is difficult to make up for the delay, because no one was employed in the GPBiH in the previous five years.
Raise wages
– Next year, sometime soon, we will announce a competition for the 15th grade, so it turns out that during my mandate we will receive about 750 police officers, which I don’t know that any agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina has done. I am sorry that we are missing 1,305 people, next year it will be even worse, but we are fighting in an environment where we have not had a budget for 11 months. I would like to see our police officers get a raise, a hot meal, and especially an increase in their transportation allowance. All border guards have to drive to get to work, because there are few of them who live and work in the same place – points out Kuprešaković.
100 members of FRONTEX
More than 100 members of FRONTEX are deployed at the border crossings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Kuprešaković assesses the cooperation with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency as excellent.
– Their knowledge, approach and technical equipment at their disposal, along with our knowledge of the institutional framework, the field and the practice we have, already give quite good results as far as the activities in the field are concerned. Positive evaluations come from all the fields where FRONTEX is deployed, and we also received praise from the general director of FRONTEX – says Kuprešaković.
