31 мая 2024 — 14:47
The passage of the Latvian border with Russia for heavy truck drivers has increased to 12 days, while Latvian carriers at the border — no more than 25%, the newspaper Delovoy Peterburg reports, referring to the LSM portal.
Alexander Potsiluiko, head of the Latvian Association of carriers Latvijas Auto, called the situation on the border with Russia critical and sad, the portal informs. According to him, in Grebnevo (Ubylinka from the Russian side), waiting in line reaches up to 12 days, at the Latvian-Belarusian border at the Paternieki checkpoint (Grigorovshchina) — up to 15 days.
"To a normal person who has not encountered this, it cannot even be explained. Well, try to spend 10 days in the car," complained Potsiluiko.
According to him, the state is also in the red from such a situation, since only the road services spend up to 100 thousand euros per year on cleaning border areas, and the cost of the border service for issuing and delivering coupons to heavy truck drivers is up to 120 thousand euros.
The head of Latvijas Auto called these expenses unnecessary, which could be directed to the construction of waiting terminals for trucks with toilets, showers and cafes for drivers.
Potsiluiko noted that Latvian carriers have been taking this initiative for many years and are even ready to finance it themselves. An electronic queue is urgently needed so that drivers do not live at the border, the publication says.
The situation at the entrance to Russia at the Latvian checkpoints began to worsen in April, when thousands of trucks accumulated in traffic jams: heavy trucks lined up for tens of kilometers. By the end of April, the queue of trucks reached 2.5 thousand cars. The Federal Customs Service noted that trucks stand in queues for 20 days, and among the goods there are perishable products and medicines. At the border of Lithuania with Russia at the Kaliningrad Chernyshevskoye checkpoint, the presence of an electronic queue system did not save the situation: the backlog in it in March reached 16 days. In that situation, the Kaliningrad authorities accused the Lithuanian side, which artificially reduces the capacity of the adjacent Kibartai checkpoint. At the same time, Lithuanian officials themselves noted the abnormality of the situation: the queue, starting 15-18 km from the border, creates inconveniences for local residents.
The problem of queues also concerns the Estonian border. The Association of International Road Carriers of Estonia called on the country's authorities to abandon plans to close the Koidula checkpoint (Kunichina Gora) overnight, as queues at the border with Russia "increased to a month."