The news was delivered by Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wąsik at a joint news conference with the deputy head of the country's Border Guard agency, Brig. Gen. Wioleta Gorzkowska.
“Today, the Border Guard agency signed three large contracts for the construction of the border barrier,” Wąsik told reporters.
He added that the protective wall would be built on the basis of an act of parliament that entered into force in October.
Under this law, greenlighted by President Andrzej Duda, “a special task force was set up to make preparations for the construction of the protective border wall,” Wąsik said, adding that with the signing of the contracts, the first phase of the project was now complete.
The Border Guard’s Gorzkowska said that the construction of a solid barrier was “an absolutely necessary and urgent investment” amid “the continuing destabilisation on the Polish-Belarusian frontier.”
She called the planned protective wall “strategic” and “vital” for her agency’s work.
“It’s an enormous challenge for us, the biggest construction project in the history of the Border Guard," Gorzkowska told the news conference.
She confirmed earlier announcements that the protective wall, consisting of 5-metre steel posts crowned by barbed wire, would stretch over 186 kilometres.
The structure is expected to be ready by the middle of this year, the state PAP news agency reported, citing Poland's interior ministry.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, TVP Info
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Michał Owczarek.