There will be a two day conference where the Australian Federal Police will host the 54 participants of the “Mekim Senis Placements” program.
There will be a two day conference where the Australian Federal Police will host the 54 participants of the “Mekim Senis Placements” program.
The conference according to Head of the AFP PNG Deployment, Assistant Commissioner Allan Scott, will be an opportunity for the AFP to engage in feedback and review of issues or areas of improvement for the course.
This two day conference he says will serve as a retention program so that the officers can talk about their experiences, what they have learnt and how they have applied it in their duties since returning to their offices.
The meet is being attended by officers from Lae, Madang and Port Moresby and is also a way for the AFP to gauge and review the outcomes of the concept from the participants.
Also there are police officers from Queensland and Northern Territory, the police groups that engaged PNG officers in their police precincts as part of their 4 weeks engagements under the program.
Leading the visiting delegation, Assistant Commissioner Paul Taylor says that his officers were happy to help assist the RPNGC participants in this program, adding that with a growing PNG community in their areas such as Cairns and Townsville in particular, it was good to get an insight into policing from PNG officers.
He says it was very important that culturally diverse places like these two cities had a police force that was ready to serve their communities regardless of their diverse cultural back grounds and the experience gained by his personnel helped them better understand the PNG community living in their areas.
Meantime, NCD Metropolitan police commander Andy Bawa says that one of the main challenges that many of the PNG officers had to deal with and overcome as a result of this program was the laid back “PNG Time” attitude that many of them faced.
He says that other areas that the program helped many of the PNG officers deal with was the service aspect of their duties as well as help them regroup in terms of their own personal discipline.