Enhance  Capacity of Border Crossing Points

The hand over ceremony of 10 computers aimed at strengthening the existing capacities of the Faculty for Advanced Training under the High Military Customs of the Republic of Uzbekistan was held on the 25th of January. The new computers were connected to local area network having 11 nodes provided by UNODC previously. Together, these computers already allowed the training of about 225 officers.

Since 2005, the project "Computer-based drug law enforcement training in the countries of Central Asia, Caucasus and Afghanistan" successfully cooperates with law enforcement bodies in the field of interactive, computer-based training. The project aims at enhancement of governments' capacities to develop and implement self-sustaining training programs to counter drug trafficking, money laundering and related cross-border criminal activity through the application of a computer-based training program. Thus, computer training classes were established at the Higher Military Customs Institute of the State Customs Committee in Uzbekistan. A number of training courses were organized for customs staff, aimed at strengthening detection capacities of drug trafficking, drug smuggling and money laundering. In total, more than 3000 students were trained since the beginning of the project. Future project activities will involve the translation of training modules into Uzbek.

A recent assessment of interactive computer-based class activities show that the Higher Military Customs Institute of the Republic of Uzbekistan was the most effective and successful in the utilization of the computer-based classes. Therefore, it was decided to further enhance the training capacity by providing 10 additional PCs.