Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees donate 21 vehicles for Moldova's Border Police

Chisinau, 12 April /MOLDPRES/ - The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)  today donated 21 vehicles to the Interior Ministry (MAI), in order to support the institution’s response to the management of the flow of refugees from Ukraine.  

Attending the event on the donation’s delivery were Interior Minister Ana Revenco, UNHCR Representative in Moldova Francesca Bonelli and the head of the General Inspectorate of Border Police (IGPF), Rosian Vasiloi.    

The vehicles, worth more than half a million dollars, will be used by the Border Police, in order to consolidate its mobility and enhance the monitoring capacity.  

„In the context of the war in Ukraine, a better endowment of the Interior Ministry’s first line subdivisions enhances both the national security and the regional one, contributing to strengthening the extended security belt in the region. Due to the support of the U.S. Embassy in Moldova and of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, those about 1,000 km of the land state border will be safer for the citizens. We thank the UNCHR partners for this donation, which comes exactly for the present needs of the General Inspectorate of Border Police,’’ Ana Revenco said.    

„The government has significantly improved its capacity to process the border crossings and facilitated the entrance of more than 400,000 refugees from Ukraine in just six weeks. We believe that these vehicles will enhance even more the mobility of the border police between various border crossing points, in order to further facilitate its crossing from Ukraine,’’ UNHCR Representative in Moldova Francesca Bonelli said.     

According to official statistics, over 410,000 refugees from Ukraine have entered Moldova since the beginning of the war in the neighbor country. Most of them moved to other European countries and about 96,000 are still in Moldova.

Photo: MAI