Law and order remains a serious concern for Lae city residents. They’ve called for more police stations to be built in notorious suburbs in Lae city.
This comes after residents continue to fall prey to the petty criminals, who robbed them for mobile phones, goods and car thef.
The Lae’s boundary road is one of the examples of a notorious suburb in Lae city.
Over the last two weeks, it has been the hive of criminal activities, and that has been one of the outrages for the people who leave there.
“Many times, young girls and mothers fall victims to these criminals. They robbed us from our mobile phones and even our goods after we come back from shopping”, another female resident said.
Their concern is very basic. “We want police stations built here, to cater to the level of criminal activities that are happening here”, says a female resident.
But for the Lae police, they have their own backlog of problems to deal with. Police stations built in the early 1990’s have now deteriorated, or are rendered useless, as more people flock into the city and the ratio of police officers to people has dropped significantly.
On numerous occasions, Lae police boss admitted that Lae police are ill equipped and under resourced. “The number of manpower that we have, can be dispatched to all the locations around the city at one time”, Lae's Metropolitan Superintendent Iven Lakatani said.
Much of the works are taken care of by the community police who have assisted with vital information leading to the arrests of troublemakers. Like other major towns and cities in Papua New Guinea, Lae city is surrounded by illegal settlements.
Recently, the city authorities evicted illegal settlers. For some, it is seen as a positive move taken by police and the provincial government in the battle against law and order problems in the city, but the question of whether or not if it will solve Lae’s law and order problems, still lingers.
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