Polish border guards threaten Italian strike on the border with Ukraine
There are more and more vehicles on the border between Ukraine and Poland, but there are not as many checkpoints as we would like, and their capacity is exceeded every day, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Roman Stakhiv, senior officer of the sector for interaction with the media of the Western Regional Directorate of the State Border Service of Ukraine, spoke about this.
“First of all, there are not as many points as we would like. Secondly, there are more and more vehicles every year. Obviously, the physical capacity of checkpoints suffers because of this. Although we are increasing the number of border guards and inspectors in order to speed up control functions and checkpoint operations, physically the checkpoints are programmed and designed for a certain vehicle throughput. This capacity is exceeded every day, as modern realities make their own adjustments,” Stakhiv said.
At the same time, he noted that today the situation on the Ukrainian-Polish border is quite stable and without any particular aggravations regarding the accumulation of vehicles.
“There are no long queues in front of the checkpoints. There are no unusual situations in front of checkpoints. There is also no additional information from the adjacent party that events are planned on their side. There were no complaints from citizens. And those that come in, we try to promptly explain to people what the situation is,” he noted.
According to Stakhiv, as of 12:00 there were about 40-50 vehicles at the Shegini checkpoint, and now there are about 50-60 vehicles in front of the Shegini and Rava-Russkaya checkpoints. “This is not some kind of critical norm,” he clarified.
Polish media wrote at the end of September that traffic on the Polish-Ukrainian border was growing at an unprecedented pace. From January to August this year, almost 14,5 million people crossed it. Today the situation on the Polish-Ukrainian border is bad, but a real disaster is ahead, they predict in Poland.
Against this background, Polish border guards announced their readiness to resort to an Italian strike - a sharp reduction in the pace of work by workers - demanding, in particular, an increase in wages. If it comes to this, the Polish-Ukrainian border will actually be paralyzed.
A silent strike on the part of the Polish side at the border in September was confirmed by the Ukrainian State Fiscal Service.
Polish border guards threaten Italian strike on Ukrainian border.