The strengthening of the Services and its floating means, requests in a letter to the leadership of the Ministry of Shipping and Island Policy, the Coast Guard and the local MPs, the Union of Coast Guard Personnel (EPLS) of Western Crete.

As he points out, “unfortunately, once again we are forced as a Union to return to the well-known issue of immigration, which has been of intense concern to the Services of our region in recent months.
As long as it is not realized by our leadership that our region has become – established as a destination for migratory flows, especially the southern coasts of the prefecture of Chania (Sfakion – Paleochora – Elafonisi) and the island of Gavdos, as long as they try to downplay the numbers and the incidents, as long as measures are not taken to really strengthen our Services and our operational means, reality will deny them.

From the beginning of autumn until today, the staff of the Services of our region is faced almost daily with the management of incidents of rescue, collection, transport, guarding, transfer to Athens of hundreds of P.E.P.

From the beginning of the outbreak of the phenomenon, we had informed our leadership and all the parliamentarians of our district many times about the difficult situation in which our Services and the watercraft are.

Even today we are waiting for even one member to be sent to reinforce a service in our region and we have not seen it….

We are still waiting for our watercraft crews to be reinforced and we haven’t seen it….

We are still waiting for the PPLS to be strengthened. 920 with new staff from productive schools, remaining the only one in its category that has not been done, and which is staffed exclusively by the Central Port Authority of Chania, while it carries out missions 11 months a year outside of Chania and we have not seen it…

We are still waiting for the unfair treatment of the Services of Paleochora, X. Sfakia and Agia Galini to be remedied in relation to the change of category to 3rd and we have not seen it…

Every day we are the recipients of the indignation of our executives, whose patience is running out since putting only their honor first, this is not enough, no matter how much effort they put in.

The situation can only be dealt with by real reinforcement with cadres similar to what is already being done in the Eastern Aegean.

We are once again calling for immediate real reinforcement of our understaffed Services and our floats and we will not stop until it is done.”