Prague, July 24 (CTK) – Face- and car number plates-reading systems will be introduced at Czech international airports outside Prague, where such a system has already been in operation, but it will be extended to other parts of the facility, the government decided on Monday.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told journalists that the measures will cost about 672 million crowns.
The Interior Ministry wants the airports in Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia, Brno, Ostrava, north Moravia, and Pardubice, east Bohemia, to have the same security standards as the Prague Vaclav Havel Airport.
All airports are also to get documents- and boarding passes-readers.
In total, the measures will cost about 585 million crowns, 482 million of which will go from the Interior Ministry’s budget. The systems are to be introduced by the end of 2020.
The Interior Ministry said the airports outside Prague also have an insufficient level of integration of security systems and a low capacity of control of dangerous objects and chemical substances. They lack a blanket radiation detection and shortcomings exist in control of entrance to airport spaces closed to the public.
The Vaclav Havel Airport will get 145 special cameras capable of reading faces and compare them with the database of persons wanted, the ministry said in a press release.
The airport is also to get 30 more surveillance cameras.
The apparatuses will be placed in the transit space so that they can reach the passenger boarding bridges, individual fingers of airport terminals and connecting spaces, the ministry said.
Modernisation in Prague will cost about 89 million crowns from the Interior Ministry’s budget.
Sobotka said airports will also make a big contribution to the security measures.
He said the Prague airport’s system is unique by its extent.
The Brno airport served more than 400,000 passengers last year, the Ostrava one about 250,000. Some 50,000 used the services of the Pardubice airport and 25,000 passengers travelled from Karlovy Vary.
