2010-07-26

Control reinforced at yet another section of the Russian border

Back to News

The State Border Guard service will now have more efficient facilities to prevent illegal border crossings and smuggling with at Viešvilė Frontier Station in the district of Jurbarkas. The establishing of better working conditions for the officials was assisted by Fima company, which deployed the equipment for surveillance of the section of the Russian border for 24 hours per day.

The 30 km strip of the Russian border alongside the Nemunas River can be observed and controlled by officers at Viešvilė Frontier Station of the Pagėgiai SBGS Frontier District straight from the Frontier Station building, which houses the surveillance centre featuring tailor-made monitors. The monitors receive images 24 hours a day from day and night vision cameras installed on ten towers 25 – 35 metres high. The border control system also includes radars to detect moving objects and other special sensors that make the cameras respond automatically by turning themselves to the location at which the object was recorded.

In the words of Fima specialists who were implementing the project, the cameras cover the entire Viešvilė Frontier Station section and operate perfectly under the country’s climatic conditions. "Any outdoors equipment deployed in Lithuania is put to a significant test with the weather changing all the time. The weather conditions are particularly prone to change in the wintertime, when it is either freezing, thawing or drizzling. Therefore, we were extremely scrutinizing in choosing the facilities for the border so that they operate with immense reliability in any kind of weather," said Giedrius Zaicevas, director of Fima Security Solutions Department.

At the Frontier Station surveillance centre Fima has also installed customised software that helps managing the entire surveillance system.

The project of reinforcing control at the Viešvilė Frontier Station section has been financed with resources from the External Border Fund for 2007 – 2013. Its total cost was LTL 9,907,152, less VAT. Reconstruction of protection of the European Union borders based on standards has been envisaged in the Schengen agreement.

This is not the first project on strengthening the borders of this kind: the year 2006 saw works carried out on the Pagėgiai section of the Russian border and the Belarusian border at Varėna Frontier District, total of 60 kilometres of state border. The engineering systems deployed under the two projects can be in future integrated into the single EU external border surveillance system.