Police asking for €14.7 million budget increase to make salaries attractive
Director General of the Police and Border Guard (PPA) Elmar Vaher is asking the government to increase the police's budget by €14.7 million over the next years. Without the additional money, layoffs and a drop in the quality of PPA's work are inevitable, daily Postimees wrote on Friday.
According to the paper, Vaher isn't asking for a one-off increase, but for an addition to PPA's budget over several years, in total some €63 million by 2022.
The Police and Border Guard Board has been working to reduce its staff since 2010. By now 1,200 employees have been retired or laid off, leading to a few personnel bottlenecks as well. At the moment the board is looking for people to fill 53 patrol officers, 35 investigators, and 16 border guards' positions.
According to Vaher, several campaigns have been run to find people, but nobody is ready to work in the positions in question for the kind of salary PPA can offer.
"I believe that we could get our hiring to work if a young graduate of the Academy of Security Sciences could hope for the national average salary," Vaher said.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
