Police ready to help businesses

National

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
National Capital District Metro Supt Benjamin Turi has urged business houses to call police for escort assistance.
He said if they wanted to take their money to the bank, they could call the nearest police station and ask for assistance.
“It does not mean that they will call us every time they want to do transactions at the bank but only when they deal with very big amounts of money which they try to take to the bank to deposit,” Turi told The National.
He said it was a way of ensuring safety during transfers as many robberies and holdups  were planned by people in the company.
There has been a series of armed holdups and robberies in Port Moresby and Lae over the last few weeks when companies were preparing for banking or near closing times for the business. Among them were TST Wholesale at Four-Mile where a manager, 49-year-old Win Aung from Myanmar, was shot. He died later.
“I know many business owners do have their trusted station commanders and officers that they trust, call them so they can provide at least a unit to escort. We are here to assist those who have a big problem with security,” Turi said.
“It’s not a matter of hiding your money to take it to the bank.
Planned robberies are when criminals know when you want to deposit the money.
Most of the times someone from the company, those who are not loyal, will set up robberies,” he said.
Turi said an example was a robbery at Bismillah supermarket at Tokarara last week. The robbery was planned, and happened as the shop owners were carrying more than K20,000  to the bank without escort.
They were held up on the way.
Turi said if they could not have police assistance then they should engaged a security firm.
“Shop owners face robberies because of their own negligence,” he said.