Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Security, Wages

"We are working to make the support system of PBGB as Estonia's largest state agency as simple as possible," said the board's Director General Elmar Vaher. "In order to raise the salaries of our front line workers, on whom the security of the Estonian people directly depends, we downsize our support services as much as possible. For this, we need to reduce bureaucracy and make work processes in the institution simpler."

Tens of logisticians, personnel staff, document managers and other support staff face redundancies, explained the Police Board communications manager Martin Luige.

Over the coming months, the number of support staff will be reduced by 80, 70 of them will be made redundant.

This is the first part of the austerity plan, which aims to find 4.8 million euros in the board's salary fund to raise the minimum wage of police officials to 900 euros a month.

In order to find the money needed for the salary increase of policemen, prefectures have to reduce their budgets by 4%, central units in Tallinn by 6.5% and the support sphere by more than 10%.