Key Points:
- 130 Vehicles purchased for police with another 130 more to be shipped from Japan;
- PNG Defence Force’s Air Wing’s capacity being built;
- K400 million allocated to police last year and this year;
- Police Training ongoing to increase police manpower up to 10,000;
- A special police unit comprising of 200 personnel to respond to domestic terrorism and tribal fight;
- 50 Commonwealth police officers sought to help build capacity, provide leadership and instill respect and discipline in the force; and,
- Appeals Court being created with increased ceiling of judicial appointments from 40 to 200 judges.
Prime Minister, James Marape told Parliament today that his government was holistically addressing the escalating lawlessness in the country.
He said the Marape-Rosso Government was focused on building the capacity and capability of the Royal PNG Constabulary within these 10 years. This is beginning with expanding police strength to 10,000 from the current 6,300 personnel and co-opting members of PNG Defence Force to work with the police in special situations.
Prime Minister, James Marape reiterated this in Parliament today in his full brief while answering questions raised yesterday by Member for Vanimo-Green, Belden Namah on the escalating Law and Order problems in the country.
PM Marape, asking for time to return with better grounded answers in reflection of the seriousness of the nine raised questions, affirmed that his government was very aware of the gravity of the Law and Order situation in the country and has made it a focus in both its budgetary support and administratively.
With the current police capacity at 6,300, the Marape-Rosso Government has opened up recruitment which will be expanded into continuous recruitment and training every year over the next years to finally reach a target of 10,000 policemen and women.
Currently, 500 recruits are undergoing training at Bomana Police College with similar numbers expected this year and on-wards.
Budgetary support has also been increased substantially, especially in the last two budgets to K200 million a year totaling K400 million to rehabilitate the Police Force.
Prime Minister Marape said in Parliament today: “With only 6,300 policemen strength today, we are trying our absolute best to make sure that they are resourced to put out fires.
“To have only 6,000 police personnel against a 12 million population is very disproportionate. This means one policeman to every 20,000 citizens, in a highly youthful population like ours.
“So we would like to ramp up our police strength as we have never had a systematic recruitment and training in many years. We want to have training up and running all the time, continuously over the year. At Bomana we are looking at co-opting the officers’ training program in Lae and Bomana and opening these up to short-term and long-term.
“Our government’s focus now is to ensure that our police training is being run to bring police strength up to 10,000.
“We will be co-opting the Defence Force to work with the Police in responding to our domestic security issues, and our partnership with the United States and Australia will also assist in this area.
“So substantial resources we being allocated to the police,” said the Prime Minister in a media statement today.
The work to rehabilitate the Police Force does not end there but continues into the magisterial Services where, again, increased funding in budgetary support is being given to also rehabilitate this arm of the lower courts. Among others, it will help in clearing out the existing backlog of legal cases and also build capacity.
Work is also going into the expansion of the National and Supreme Courts to include an Appeals Court, and expand judges ceiling from the present 40 to 200.
Under the Bilateral Security Agreement with Australia, Australia will assist supply judges, who will help to clear out the huge backlog of cases that have been hindering the dispensation of justice.
Prime Minister Marape, in his short reply to Mr Namah yesterday in Parliament, said his government was looking at addressing the Law and Justice sector “holistically” and not just in pieces, and all these were part of the ongoing work going into fixing the broken down sector.