The issue of the uninhabitable state of police houses resurfaced during a recent campaign by Lae media.
Early this month, families living at Lae’s Bumbu and Tent City Police Barracks, including those occupying condemned student dormitories at the Three-Mile Department of Agriculture and Livestock’s old training centre, shared their challenges with the media. They highlighted that they use their own money to fix the state houses, suffer from years of plumbing and electricity issues, and are forced to use pit toilets in the city.
Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jnr when responding to Lae media said one of the steps the current government is taking is to ensure a maintenance program is in place when new houses are built for the Royal PNG Constabulary.
“We are sourcing from a tax credit program that we will ensure that there is a maintenance and repair program for the next 10 years,” he outlined. “For every building that we construct, it must have a 10-year program of maintenance. That is an initiative that has always been overlooked in the past; we build, we just leave things."
“Today, this government is responsible. That particular initiative is similar to what we have with our police vehicles. Our police vehicles are provided for and on top of what we are giving to the police vehicles is that, those vehicles also come with a three-year warranty. This means that full service of the vehicle is part of the purchase price.”
The police minister said the new initiatives mean that local MPs and District Development Authorities will not have to look for funding to repair or service police assets.
That way, the police department remains a constitutional office and is not compromised in any way.
“Into the future, our aim is to be totally autonomous, totally independent from any legislative arm. We just continue to practice being police and not having our Members (of Parliament) interfere with paying for fuel or paying for service or repair our homes,” he added.