B’ville remandee electrocuted

By STEPHANIE ELIZAH
A MAN on remand in the custody of the Bougainville police service died after he was electrocuted while trying to connect electricity to the home of a former police commander on Buka Island.
Sakius Parerea, from Wakunai, died instantly while carrying out the assignment at former Buka police station commander Alex Gunnan’s home.
Bougainville police chief Thomas Eluh said the work Parerea was doing had not been authorised.
Eluh said Gunnan, who has been blamed by relatives of the deceased, had paid K25,000 as bel kol money and was working towards paying the final K250,000 compensation demand by the end of this month.
“I assure the relatives of the deceased that the officer concerned has the responsibility to pay the grieving relatives a certain amount of money not less than K250,000 according to the demands of the relatives for the death of the remandee who was electrocuted,” Eluh said.
He urged the relatives of the deceased not to demand money from the state as they were already receiving money from the officer concerned.
Eluh said demanding compensation “is not Bougainville’s way of making peace and should not be practised in the region”.
“It is a culture adapted from the tribal areas of the New Guinea Islands,” he said.
“The habit of demanding bel kol compensation is a foreign concept and should not be practiced in Bougainville.”