Greek Citizen Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos said on Friday that another 400 border patrol officers will be hired in 2023 to better protect Greece’s borders, particularly the border with Turkey at Evros.
The minister was speaking after a meeting of his at the Ropodi region’s police headquarters on matters of security and migration.
The minister also spoke at Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ presentation of the Eastern Macedonia & Thrace 2030 Development Program, held at the northern Greek city of Komotini on the same day.
Some 250 of these border patrol officers will assume their duties in the month of February and the other 150 will do so in coming months, he added.
Greece “is not prepared to accept even one irregular migrant,” he stressed, and he also called on Turkey to “stop exploiting migrants and to respect the Greek borders, which are also the borders of Europe.”
Some 1,800 border patrol officers are now on active duty in the Evros region, Theodorikakos also told reporters, who, he underlined, in the year 2022 alone they prevented the illegal entry to Greece of some 260,000 people.
Furthermore, he noted, Greek police have, in the recent past, arrested more than 1400 human traffickers.
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