Solnice, East Bohemia, June 6 (CTK) – The Czech police opened an immigration office in Solnice to help solve the problems with foreigners employed in the Skoda Auto car maker and other factories in the Kvasiny-Solnice industrial zone, regional police chief David Fulka has told CTK.
Six police officers will serve there round-the-clock. Their number is to increase to 16 in the future, Fulka said.
The police office returned to Solnice after some 30 years.
This is one of the police activities to help improve the security situation in the region, Police President Tomas Tuhy, who took part in its opening, said today.
Apart from the foreigner police, the new office can be used by other police forces, such as the traffic police.
The new office is expected to intensify checks of foreign employees in the industrial zone.
It is situated in a municipal building in the square near the Solnice Town Hall.
“The town had the building reconstructed for 0.5 million crowns of which Skoda Auto donated 200,000. The police will lease the building,” Solnice Mayor Jan Hostinsky said.
The police spent about one million crowns on computers and other equipment in the new office. It operates as part of the immigration section of the Regional Police Headquarters.
Problems in Kvasiny and its surroundings emerged when thousands of new employees, often foreigners, arrived in the Kvasiny-Solnice industrial zone to primarily work in the expanding Skoda Auto plant. As a consequence, petty crime as well as the number of traffic offences have been rising.
The police started to deal with this situation intensively in September 2016. They reinforced patrols in the locality in January.
Skoda Auto has invested billions of crowns to enlarge its plant in Kvasiny massively. The number of its employees increased by 2600 by the end of last year. The plant has some 7000 employees now and it continues recruiting new ones.
Some 10,500 people work in the Solnice-Kvasiny industrial zone, including 3000 foreigners, mainly Poles, but also citizens of other East European countries.
($1=23.401 crowns)
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