GRODNO DISTRICT, 18 December (BelTA) – A new stationary inspection complex was put into service in the automobile border checkpoint Bruzgi at the Belarusian-Polish border. The opening ceremony took place on 18 December and gathered representatives of the customs and border services of Belarus, Polish government agencies, and the Grodno Oblast administration, BelTA has learned.
Vasily Dementei, chief of the Grodno Oblast division of the Belarusian border service, told media that the new inspection complex is designed to inspect heavy trucks. It will improve the quality and reliability of customs control and will secure the safety of cargo traffic. The new facility will process trucks three times faster than the mobile Rapiscan scanner the border checkpoint used in the past. A similar inspection complex that opened in the Belarusian-Lithuanian border checkpoint Privalka a year ago has already recouped the investments and has turned out to be very effective. The mobile Rapiscan scanner will be redeployed to another area.
The Polish side also expects a positive effect from the new addition to the Belarusian border checkpoint. Deputy Director of the Customs Chamber in Bialystok Piotr Szczepaniak stressed that in addition to scanning trucks faster the complex will increase security by suppressing the turnover of illegally transported goods and substances.
Representatives of Belarus' Customs told BelTA that similar stationary vehicle scanners will be deployed in the border checkpoints Berestovitsa and Peschatka in 2016.
The project to build a vehicle scanner based on the x-ray technology in the automobile border checkpoint Bruzgi was implemented as part of the transboundary cooperation program Poland-Belarus-Ukraine. The scanning technology allows customs officers to get a clear picture of the transported cargo within 5-15 minutes without opening the vehicle. The feature will help promptly verify the compliance of the cargo with the accompanying documents.
The vehicle scanner construction project was financed by two sources. The European Union allocated about €2.4 million for buying, delivering, and installing the scanning equipment, for building the administrative wing and the scanner hangar. Belarus' central state budget appropriated about Br20.7 billion for building the engineering networks and other construction operations.
