The Moldovan students have crowded the Romanian checkpoints
By Valeriu Gonta / Sculeni / Moldova.org / -- The winter holidays are over and so is the student’s vacation. Hundreds of students from Moldova take their books and luggage today and are heading back to Romania to study. The courses restart on Monday.
Entering the Moldovan checkpoint, the students have to unload their baggage and prove that they have no belongings prohibited by law. The journey gets tiring after at least one hour of stay. On a regular day, a bus would go through customs at the Moldovan side in 20 minutes, but today it lasted for over an hour. More than 50 passengers, mostly students had to hand in their passports and residence permits for a study purpose to be checked by the Moldovan authorities.
The hard time doesn’t end here. After successfully crossing the Moldovan border, the students are awaited by the Romanian customs officers on the other side of Prut River, which divides the countries. The passport control is rougher here. Entering the European Union, those who possess a Romanian passport can save a lot of time when going through the checkpoint. The students holding a resident permit for study purposes have to wait over two minutes in order all the official the regulations to be done. They may also be asked the purpose of their travel and the school they study at.
The Romanian customs was more demanding today. All the suitcases had to be X-Rayed and screened for prohibited belongings and the male-students to be patted-down. Some suspicious baggages were manually inspected.
If a regular journey from Balti (Moldova) to Iasi (Romania) takes three hours, today it took five hours and a half due to the big number of students crossing the border.
“This is my third year of studies in Romania. I travel quite often back home and I am tired of these rough inspections. I have never waited so long at the Romanian checkpoint,” said a Moldovan student who was traveling to Romania.
Three other buses lined up behind the bus coming from Balti. Most of the students come from Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, wherefrom most of the routes to Romania are organized.
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