BRATISLAVA, December 13, (WEBNOVINY) — The Ministry of Interior plans to buy new firearms for Slovakia’s Police Corps. Announcement of two public tenders were published in the Public Procurement Bulletin: one pistols using 9mm Luger caliber cartridges worth almost seven million euro, the other one for buying automatic rifles using the same caliber, worth more than ten million euro.
A tender for almost 6.9 million euro is being prepared for the acquisition of pistols. “Based on the specific requirements of the service in the Police Corps, the selected pistol has to be produced in three alternative sizes. The goal is fulfilling the requirement of using a single caliber and achieving unification of firearm parts as high as possible […] while keeping the weight of the weapon as light as possible,” the tender requirements state. The department also decided to buy automatic rifles for 10.13 million euro, which the policemen will carry with them every day. “Therefore, the weapon has to be light, reliable and effective,” reads the material, containing more specifications the automatic rifles have to fulfill.
For the Ministry of Interior, rearming of the police is a priority, Minister Daniel Lipsic (KDH) says. Next year, the Ministry is expected to spend 860.6 million euro. “If the budget is adopted in this proposed version, and for us rearming is a priority, then there will be funds available for it,” said Lipsic at the end of September when rewarding the policemen who were intervening against the Devinska Nova Ves gunman on August 30.
Rearmament of the police became a hot topic after Lubomir Harman shot and killed seven people with a military assault rifle. One day after the tragedy, Minister Lipsic announced that that every police patrol should carry a Scorpion vz. 61 submachine gun. Lipsic assumed that the police will be more capable of intervening in such situations. A wave of criticism rose against the Czechoslovak Scorpion vz. 61 both from arms experts and from policemen, claiming the weapon to be unsuitable for police actions in cases such as the Devinska Nova Ves incident.
“We would like to start with rearmament next year. Next year, we also would like to complete a large part of it,” Lipsic said. He, however, admitted, that the rearmament could last two years. As Lucia Garajova from the Interior Ministry’s press department said for SITA news agency, the police plans to buy ten thousand automatic rifles and twenty-four thousand 9mm caliber pistols.
SITA