At about 3pm today in the centre of Boroko, at the Tabari Market, gunshots could be heard and people could be seen fleeing for the safety of their lives as members of the Police force torched street vendor's goods that were displayed on sale.
Police officers, rushed in to the Tabari Street Market knocking street vendors items over, stuffing what sales items and money they found into their pockets and torching the majority of vendor items collected in the street.
Shocked and shaken vendors stood and watched from a distance as their bread and butter went up in flame and smoke.
Mr Neske from Goroka said “Doing sales is how we survive in the city. The Police do not have any right to do this as they must come with the proper awareness to advice us that they no longer want us to sell our goods here. This type of harassment is out of the question.”
Another vendor, Mr. Simon Kingi of Tari said, “By doing this, the Police are basically telling us to go and steal for a living. When we work for our food, the city is safer.”
A security officer at the BSP Bank said that the ransacking mayhem took place over almost half an hour and gun shots were fired into the air to scare and disperse people.
Jim Alo from Kagua said, “We will be collecting contributions from all the vendors here in the Tabari Place Market to hire a lawyer and to take the state to court. We want to know who was responsible for this- weather the order came from the Police Commissioner's Office or the head of the CIS.”
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