Public service academy cadets could start training in Narva by 2016
There's more meat on the bones of the idea to move a part of the Public Service Academy to the northeastern border town of Narva, as Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur said a facility there could be accepting interns by 2016.
Narva city officials say they support the idea but say they would prefer the entire academy to make the move, as was originally proposed.
The cabinet struck down the idea to move the academy to Narva, a heavily Russian-speaking town, as not being cost-effective. On the face of it, the internship facility would involve building one dorm, though naturally there would also be much new curricular development.
Pevkur stressed that it wouldn't be just a campus in Narva but a network for trainees spanning all of Ida-Viru County.
Rescue trainees will be doing daily work in the respective headquarters, the border guards out in the border checkpoints or patrolling the river, and the same for police, prison guards and customs officials, Pevkur told ERR radio.
He said that Ida-Viru County already had up to 100 more young cadets than it had in the past.
Narva Mayor Eduard East said that the benefits seen by the city lie mainly in increased internal security - after all, since Crimea was annexed by Russia last spring in Ukraine, Narva has been mentioned in worst-case scenarios among more jittery geopolitical experts.