The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) and the Police Administration of Montenegro have not yet decided where and when they will relocate the Tivat Security Department from the current, dilapidated and potentially dangerous facility in which this important institution currently operates.
Director of the Directorate for Investments of the Municipality of Tivat Vlado Brguljan He told "Viesti" that in May last year, the Ministry of Interior was very keen on the idea of temporarily moving the Tivat Police Station to the adapted facility of the Hydrographic Institute of the Navy of Montenegro (HIRM) in Lepetani, so the heads of the local administration and the Ministry of Interior even toured the building together, and the Municipality set out to carry out an adaptation project at its own expense in accordance with the needs of the police.
However, according to Brgiuljan, the Ministry of Interior, in June, for reasons never clearly communicated to the people of Tivat, gave up on that option and turned to finding space for temporary accommodation for the Tivat Military District at another location, on its own initiative.
According to inside information, there was an option to temporarily move the police to a part of the business building of the bus station and shopping center on Kava, but that was also abandoned.
Brguljan points out that the Ministry of Interior's management is now showing interest in temporarily moving the Tivat Police Station to Lepetane, which is why, as he says, they have asked the Municipality to provide them with the adaptation project that was done last year and to help in making a new estimate of how much it would all cost.
The Ministry of Interior told "Vijesti" that the ministry and the Municipality of Tivat "have continuous and constructive cooperation, confirmed by the signed Memorandum of Cooperation on the implementation of the priority project of the central activities facility in Tivat."
"Given that the police are currently located in a prefabricated building from the 1980s, which is dilapidated and inadequate for modern needs, intensive activities are underway to ensure better working conditions, including planning the construction of a new building in cooperation with the Municipality of Tivat, which will also provide space for the protection and rescue service. Until a permanent solution is realized, several options for temporary accommodation of the Tivat Police Station are being considered, about which the public will be informed in a timely manner," the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced.
The dilapidated wooden barracks in which the Tivat Police Station was located after the 1979 earthquake, and which should be removed in order to build a new joint building of the Fire Department and the new police station in Tivat, have in the meantime begun to partially collapse on their own. The working and living conditions of people in that building are extremely problematic, and since November last year, most of the building has been out of use. Police officers work in only two rooms in very difficult conditions, completely inappropriate for the 21st century and the image of Tivat as a “Montenegrin Monte Carlo”. The Police Union has also reacted to this, asking the authorities in the Ministry of the Interior and the top of the Police Administration to provide adequate working conditions for police officers in Tivat as soon as possible, but to date there has been almost no progress for the better in this regard.
The Municipality of Tivat, although it is not within its direct jurisdiction, is aware of this problem. Last year, the leadership of the Ministry of Interior and the Police Administration offered the Tivat Police Station to temporarily move to the adapted and renovated, currently neglected building of the former Hydrographic Institute of the Navy of Montenegro (HIRM) in Lepetani, until the construction of a new police station. This building, with an area of almost 300 square meters, was built during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and HIRM left it about ten years ago, when this building became state-owned, abandoned and in disrepair. The Municipality of Tivat was willing to urgently renovate and equip part of this building for the needs of temporary police accommodation, and last year it launched a project for the partial adaptation of this building and budgeted 50.000 euros for the works as a contribution from the local administration to solving the accommodation problems of the Tivat Police Station. The leadership of the Ministry of Interior and the Police Administration rejected such an offer from the Municipality, but so far it has not solved the problem.
When asked why they did this, after waiting for more than a month for answers, the Ministry of Interior told "Vijesti" that the former HIRM facility "which is being mentioned in public is not owned by the Municipality of Tivat, and as such could not have been offered as an alternative solution for temporary accommodation of Tivat Security Department officers, nor was it the subject of a decision by the Ministry of Interior."
"During the current year, in accordance with the applicable law and procedures, the Ministry of Interior will prepare complete technical documentation, after which the reconstruction of the facility and its commissioning are planned, from the Ministry of Interior budget," announced the department's Public Relations Team, led by Minister Danilo Šaranović (Democrats).
They avoided responding to a request to confirm or deny the information that the decisive factor in their decision to reject this offer from the Municipality of Tivat was the position of the State Secretary at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Dragana Kažanegra Stanišić, who, according to unofficial information from "Vijesti", was the strongest opponent of the Tivat police temporarily moving to Lepetane.
Incidentally, the former HIRM building and the entire surrounding complex of the former small barracks and military warehouses in Lepetani, which are located in an extremely attractive location, have long caught the eye of many investors and construction contractors, but the state has not yet officially given up on its intention to retain these facilities in full possession and use them for the accommodation and work of its organs, such as the army and police. Well-informed sources claim that, however, any additional "increase in the presence" and the degree of use of this complex by state services in the near future would thwart the realization of the intentions of potential investors to, with the help of their associates from the ranks of the state administration, "get hold of" Lepetani in the foreseeable future and start building apartments for the market here under the guise of a "tourist resort", as has been the practice for many years with other similar attractive state plots on the coast.
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