Housing for cops top on the ‘list to do’

Oseah Philemon




Lae City is Papua New Guinea’s second largest city and the industrial hub of the country.
Most of the goods produced in factories for PNG are produced from Lae. The city is affectionately called Papua New Guinea’s ‘Garden City’ because of its towering rain trees and the green vegetation surrounding the city.
Sadly, it is also a city known for its escalating crime rate—both serious and petty crimes.
Prominent Lae businessman Sir Bob Sinclair has described the law and order problems as the most serious issue affecting both business and community in Lae.
Lae in Morobe province like all other provinces throughout PNG, suffers from lack of funds to carry out maintenance work on its assets, no new vehicles, lack of resources to fight crime and low morale.
Lae City alone has a population of around 325,000 out of over 500,000 for the whole Morobe Province—one of the biggest provinces in PNG. Heading the ‘To Do List’ for police is housing for police families.
Throughout PNG many police houses have been condemned by health inspectors and declared unfit for human habitation.
In Lae, many police houses in the Bumbu Barracks fit that category. Unfortunately, the families cannot be moved out because they have no where else to live.
The rundown low covenant homes at the Lae police barracks have been their home for more than 30 years.
From where a policeman rests his body after a hard shift trying to fight crime and keep the city safe, the policeman wakes up to find that his uniform is worn out and has not been replaced for many years. The worn-out uniform he now wears was issued more than five years ago—the only pair. So he gets dressed up and is ready to go to work.
But there is no vehicle. The only vehicle allocated to his unit broke down years ago and has not been replaced since.
Somehow he gets to the office only to find that the old computer is not working. It has been out of order for over two years with no funds to have it repaired. The public should not expect to get police reports if they report crimes because there are no computers.
If a policeman is assigned to attend to a crime scene, his unit will probably find they have only one old single shotgun for the job. No new firearms have been issued for the last 20 years.
Capital injection
Now police have taken their fight for more resources to the Government of Papua New Guinea. Police Commissioner Gari Baki has told the government that PNG’s police force is fast grinding to a complete halt—unless it is injected with a massive dose of hundreds of millions of kina to bring it back to life.
The no-nonsense message was given to the Ministerial Committee on Law and Order chaired by Internal Security Minister Sani Rambi.
Police Commissioner Baki led his entire team of police top brass to the Waigani meeting where he presented before the ministers a complete picture of the state of the police force and the serious threat it faces in carrying out its constitutional duty of maintaining peace and order in the country.
Baki said the lack of adequate funding for the force over the years since independence in 1975 has taken its toll on the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary.
At present, PNG has 4800 policemen and women. However, Commissioner Baki said 50 percent of this number are on their way out—having reached the retirement age. The remaining 50% are approaching retirement, he said.
Baki said there has been no new recruitment to fill the vacancies and the situation has reached crisis point. The police will need no less that K50 million on top of its recurrent budget to fix  housing, buy new vehicles, as well as equipping themselves to fight crime. If that happened, he said police would be able to fix most of their problems within seven years. The total police budget this year is K182 million.
However, Baki said most of that money has gone towards personal emoluments for the police workforce and utilities which keep climbing.
Only  K20 million is available for operational requirements and that is not enough, he said.
Baki said he needs K15 million to replace the 500 police vehicles throughout the country that are long overdue for replacement. Many have been rendered useless and sitting either at the police stations or at Plant and Transport Branch (PTB) pools.
Morobe police told the provincial governor Luther Wenge that criminals are better armed than them and in the event of a major civil unrest, police would find great difficulty maintaining peace in the community.
Minister Rambiu said after the meeting PNG police face an uphill battle to regain  lost pride.
It seems both the minister and police commissioner are looking for answers as to how to rescue the force.
Meanwhile, former minister for internal security Bire Kimisopa said Baki and his senior officers should control their spending of public funds and demonstrate more accountability to regain public confidence.
Kimisopa said they also need to improve on their human rights record  which he described as the worst in the whole of the Commonwealth.
Public outcry against police brutality is not uncommon in PNG and despite repeated assurances by police that something is being done against those responsible, no concrete evidence has surfaced about the actions taken.
In Lae recently, a woman allegedly involved in prostitution was beaten to death by a police patrol in the central business district. But nothing has so far come of it.
Many civil claims against the State that have gone before the courts concern police burning and destruction of houses in villages, mostly in the Highlands region.
Kimisopa said when he was appointed minister responsible for the police in 2002 he realised the force was facing serious problems especially with its command structure. He said failure by police to prosecute crime suspects successfully before the courts was also a major problem.
“We had failed prosecutions all throughout the country,” he said.
Kimisopa said police were ill-equipped to carry out forensic investigations into major white collar crimes resulting in many people not being prosecuted for their crimes.
“Police have been politicised and are no longer independent to carry out their constitutional duties.”
Prosecution failures
Kimisopa said the Somare Government has been generous to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) in terms of providing funds. But police leadership needed to show more accountability in the way they spend public funds and also take control of the force so that it can do what it is there to do—maintain law and order in the community.
“We were losing prosecutions throughout the country,” he said.
Kimisopa said prosecution failures led to diminished public confidence in the police and their ability to put criminals behind bars.
“Police lack technical skills and the technological know how to do forensic investigations into major crimes resulting in white collar criminals getting away with their crimes.”
At least 90 percent of the cases that go before the committal courts get thrown out because of lack of hard evidence.
He described the RPNGC as “hemorrhaging to death” because of serious problems with its command structure.
It was suggested that funding for police should be performance-based to ensure that police implemented the 66 recommendations of the police review report which is yet to be implemented.
Former police commissioner Sam Inguba set in motion the implementation of three major recommendations of the report—review of police salaries, housing and uniform. But, the rest still remained untouched, he said.
One former senior officer said one of the major problems facing PNG police is corruption which has spread throughout the force.
The former officer said corruption was rife in the force and so is the misuse and abuse of public funds.