The Interior Ministry rejects a proposal to merge its air department with that of the Defence Ministry, TASR was told by Interior Ministry spokesperson Zuzana Eliasova on Monday. Eliasova spoke in response to the bill submitted for comments by the Defence Ministry. The Interior Ministry emphatically rejects the initiative. "The Interior Ministry possesses analyses at its disposal that indicate that merging the air departments of the ministries of interior and defence is inadvisable. The fact also remains that no expert talks on this issue have been held to date. We thus fail to comprehend this initiative, which has been carried out without any cooperation from the Interior Ministry," said Eliasova. The Defence Ministry has proposed to merge air departments of the two ministries under its own remit. This would mean that all air transport of constitutional officials will be carried out by the Slovak Armed Forces. The Defence Ministry argues in the motion that Slovakia is the only EU and NATO member state, in which such air transport is carried out by the Interior Ministry. Helicopters dispatched to police, rescue and firefighter missions should remain within the structures of the Interior Ministry, reads the motion.
Source: TASR
