Nezavisne novine: Out of 89 border crossings in BiH, only 12 of them satisfy the minimum technical and communicational standards, has been said by Vinko Dumančić, director of the BiH Border Police.
"We are far from the Schengen standards, border crossings are not communication connected, and most of the policemen and custom officers work in containers. They control the traffic without the roof over their heads, under an open sky, which makes their work harder", Dumančić has said.
He has pointed out that out of 12 border crossings, which satisfy the minimum standards, seven of them have been renovated by donations of the European Commission.
The border of BiH is 1.665 kilometers long and it has 89 border crossings, out of which 58 towards Croatia, 19 towards Serbia and 8 towards Montenegro, including four existing airports in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Mostar and Banja Luka.
In order for border crossing to satisfy the EU standards, it should have a reception-control spot with cabins for border policemen and custom officers, terminal with certain number of parking lots, hall for the vehicle check, eaves, video-overview, storages for deprived commodity, aggregates for electricity, toilets, entering and exiting lines, and similar.
Employed in the Border Police say that some of the EU donations for modernization of border crossings have not been used because at some border crossings property-legal relations have not been solved, so it can be known in whose ownership the land around borders is, which is just one more problem.
"Bossing the border crossings is in a competence of the Indirect Tax Authority of BiH (ITA), so they are the ones, who should solve these problems", Dumančić has said and added that they have renovated five crossings by their funds.
Border crossings, which satisfy the technical conditions, are: Klobuk, Zupci, Rača, Karakaj, Gradina-Jasenovac, Šamac, Orašje, Izačić, and Hukića brdo-Maljevac.
In the ITA BiH they have said that out of 53 border crossings with their services, 27 should work on certain interventions, while the rest of them are in a satisfying condition.
"For 13 of them some serious interventions should be done, as are the accessing lines, appropriate objects and similar. Seven of them need some smaller interventions, as are the toilets, while the other seven need a minimum of investing", has been said by Ratko Kovačević, spokesperson of the ITA BiH, who has added that he does not know about the condition of other border crossings, because only the employees of the Border Police are present there.
He thinks that it is hard to precise the deadlines by which inadequate border crossings could be renovated, because the work is huge and it requires huge financial funds.