On July 1, in Lithuania and Latvia, the Border Management Programme in Central Asia (BOMCA 10) started the second round of the 12-weeks Train – the – Trainers (ToT) training course for K9 instructors of five Central Asian countries. It is important to recall that these programme activities are aimed at improving dog handling instructors’ theoretical knowledge and practical skills for the training of dog handling teams and service dogs, used for daily border guarding, customs control and law enforcement tasks.

On July 18, at State Border Guard College of Latvia, BOMCA 10 officially launched the second round of ToT in Rezekne, Latvia. High-level representatives from the MFA of the Republic of Latvia, management of the State Border Guard of Latvia (BOMCA 10 Project leader) and representatives from the Embassies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan participated in the opening ceremony.

During the event, the Foreign Minister of Latvia H.E Baiba Braže, underlined the priority of strengthening Latvia’s cooperation with Central Asian countries and assured political support in the implementation of BOMCA programme, as well as the strong commitment of Latvia to lead the Consortium of EU countries for the next phase of the programme – BOMCA 11.

This ToT training course was organised within the framework of BOMCA Programme’s Component 2, “Improvement of detection capacities to counter cross-border crime”.