Police and border guards: losing blood fast

Photo: Repro

Every year, Police and Border Guard Board loses a hundred employees. For Estonia’s largest employer, this means shrinking of staff by a couple of per cent, yearly – a hole impossible to fill by each year’s graduates from Public Service Academy. Small steps are taken to mitigate the problem by cutting bureaucracy at infringement procedures.

Critical level has long been reached. Gaps in interior security, widening over the years, are being covered by constant manoeuvrings and savings. It is the worst in Ida-Viru County and Tallinn. This cannot last for long.

The chronic lack of staff at Police and Border Guard Board (PBGB) might be summed up like this: in an organization with close to 6,000 employees, little over 4,300 wear the uniform. That’s 333 less than three years ago.

True, for this year, minister of interior affairs Ken-Marti Vaher did grant €7m to PBGB to raise the salaries. That helps, of course. However: the sum PBGB needs to keep salaries competitive is four times larger. €28m more would be needed. At once.

Due to chronic shortage of finances, even 2012 ended with net loss of 157 people – although it was known that 2013 will start with a raise for many policemen, as salaries would be reviewed.

With criminal police, all appears well on the surface, all posts being filled up. What is problematic is the maintenance of public order, meaning police patrols. The last three months being especially gloomy, with public order police losing an average of ten people a month. «It is very important to put a stop to the rapid staff turnover,» admits Public Police chief Tarmo Miilits.

Not that the streets are emptying of patrol units. On the contrary: this year, PBGB plans to increase the average of functional patrols in Estonia to a hundred, from last year’s 93. Largely, however, this will be achieved by increase of assistant police officers and the new e-procedures. The latter will save thousands of work-hours and lots of bureaucracy,allowing patrols cut paper work and deal increasingly with infringements.

But there is a serious problem with experienced patrol officers. It is the guys in top physical shape with 3-4 years of working experience that are quitting service. They are leaving, as their mandatory time of civil service, linked to free higher education, runs out. For instance: Lääne-Viru County Police Prefecture last year lost a whole bunch of strong young men, patrol officers. They left all at once – to be truck drivers.