site.btaGovernment Adopts Anti-Conventional Crime Plan

Government Adopts Anti-Conventional Crime Plan

Sofia, January 6 (BTA) - At an extraordinary meeting Friday the Council of Ministers adopted a Plan to Fight Conventional Crime.

The Government approved a decree for additional costs under the budget of the Interior Ministry for 2017 to cover current expenses of 5.0 million for activities aimed to counteract conventional crime, as well as 2.0 million leva for the purchase of new motor vehicles.

A number of measures have been designed to counter conventional crime: statutory, preventive, staff and logistics, as well as a national specialized operation against conventional crime with a duration of up to three months.

A total of 1,140 police cars will take part in the national specialized police operation as security. The mobility of police patrols in small and remote settlements requires 300 new vehicles worth some 8.0 million leva, with 6.0 million leva from the Interior Ministry budget and the additional 2.0 million leva extended now.

In spite of the objective difficulties in the operation of the Interior Ministry related to the complicated security environment in Bulgaria and the neighboring countries, increased workload in countering migration pressure, the restructuring of the system and shortage of human and material resources, 2015 and 2016 registered a decline of crime and an increase of the number of resolved cases. This statistics reveals the better work of Interior Ministry structures, but conventional crime continues to be a problem for the security of the public.

There are also zones with higher risk for the property and the individual in small settlements and depopulated regions.

Increased police presence will be supported with larger numbers of officers which have been calculated according to the population, the criminal environment and the location of the relevant region.

At the beginning of the meeting outgoing Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that if the next government decides it may continue the plan. If not, when GERB returns to power, the government will extend the plan to cover the whole year.

Interior Minister Roumyana Buchvarova said the plan was prepared even before the presidential election campaign at the end of 2016. "It was a logical end to our efforts in the last two years to ensure a new approach to conventional crime, which primarily includes prevention," she added.