Prime Minister (PM) James Marape in Parliament this morning assured the house that his government continues to work towards improving law enforcement to address the law and order and tribal fighting situation in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
The prime minister in his response to a series of questions from the Member for Vanimo Green Belden Namah, said one of the actions taken was to ensure consistency in the office of the Police Commissioner.
He said in the past 8 years there have been 4 police commissioners, stating that there is no consistency in the office, hence police needs to have a long term Commissioner in office to ensure the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) does a better job.
Also, he said the RPNGC has a new Elite Police Unit trained to specifically handle domestic terrorism acts like tribal fights and so on, will be put into duty soon to address such cases.
He also said improvements have been made as well to the magisterial services to ensure better handling of cases and convictions.
The other efforts taken by his government to improve law and order are the Defence Contract Agreement made with the United States and the Military Security Agreement with Australia, which was signed recently between himself and his Australian counterpart.
“We have taken a holistic look into the entire sector to improve and address the law and order matters,” said the PM.
PM Marape also stated that of previous tribal conflicts, certain people who were responsible for the killings were arrested and convicted and are spending time in prison, while some met unfortunate ends.
On that note, he said people who have done killings in tribal conflicts or committed other criminal activities will be dealt with when caught no matter what.
However, the PM said to give a full response to the 9 questions of the Member tomorrow, so to give a full scope of the work his government is doing to address law and order issues in the country.