Prydniprovska Railways (Dnipropetrovsk) has appealed to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine asking them to improve their work at Melitopol station to prevent delays in the traffic of passenger trains.

"The railways is asking the Border Service employees to ensure the conducting of checks on passenger trains at stations at the exactly defined time of train stops, according to schedule, and finish carrying out control operations before the departure of the trains according to the schedule," reads a statement by Ukrzaliznytsia.

According to its data, in general for the period from March 30 to May 7 some 488 cases of train delays of a total of over 216 hours were recorded at Melitopol station, in particular 26 passenger trains are delayed daily for a time exceeding the agreed period of stops.

"The actual duration of customs and border operations is much longer than [agreed], which makes it impossible for the railways to follow the regulatory train schedule, threatens the safety of transportation," Ukrzaliznytsia said.

The administration notes that the railways are constantly receiving complaints from passengers with the requests to intervene in the situation due to long checks on trains. In addition, the need to improve the work of checkpoints at the railway station, the strict observance of the rules of border and customs operations is also caused by the introduction of the timetable for 2014-2015, including the increase in the number of trains for summer.