Business

Truck-jam crisis on eastern Poland border
by Ivana Bruderova

The Polish government is facing the first crisis on it's frontiers after it's entry to Europe's Schengen free travel zone. A situation on borders with non-EU countries have been dramatic since the last week. More than 1000 trucks is now waiting for the crossing from Poland to Ukraine or Belarus. The truckers are desperate and furious, some of them have been waiting for fourth day to pass have blocked roads to unable anyone to pass. The reason of tension on the frontiers is effort of Polish custom officers to make their salary conditions better. The truckers said they understand to officers but they want the others to understand also what this situation bring to truckers and to their employers. They appeal government to solve the situation. Interior Minister Gregor Schetyna promised to do it until 2 or 3 days. When the situation will not get better the truckers plan to block the capital city Warsaw with their cars to draw attention to this problem. Until this extreme plan will make true, the trucks are still waiting in queues kilometers long, with the frontier with Ukraine with 100-hour wait for passage. After December 21, the eastern border of Poland became the border of Schengen and it is responsible to guard this zone. The government believes, this position is only for fully-qualified custom officers who could meet requirements for processing border traffic. But the custom officers want to be evaluated adequate for their work. A starting salary for Polish custom officer is 1300 zlotys, the government offered increase of 500 zlotys while the officers demand wage hike up to 1500 zlotys.

by Ivana Bruderova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:45 PM