Over the past month, 5,000 people have resigned from the internal affairs bodies. This was announced during the meeting by the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Vladimir Kolokoltsev.
“The shortage of personnel is very large. I would say that it is already critical. Over the past month, five thousand employees have left the internal affairs bodies. It is a difficult situation,” he said. “And there are not enough investigators.”
According to him, it is necessary “to minimize these risks” and, “first of all, in order to satisfy the population’s demand for the protection of rights and freedoms provided for by law.”
The BBC Russian service draws attention to the fact that the number of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs per capita in Russia is one of the highest in the world. In Russia, there are 635 police officers for every 100 thousand people, while in China in 2018 there were 143 employees per 100 thousand people, in the UK – 227 (202), and in the USA – 242, and these are not only police officers, but also FBI officers, CIA, DEA and other law enforcement agencies (2019).
In November last year, Kolokoltsev already spoke about the shortage of personnel. Then he said that “the outflow of personnel is large” and the shortage is 90 thousand people. According to him, in recent years, more than ten years, the number of employees in Moscow has halved.
At the same time, the number of employees of internal affairs bodies in Russia is growing every year. If in 2014 the maximum staffing was set at 894 thousand people, then in 2023 their number should have increased to 922 thousand.