Chief Supt Damaru retiring after 42 years in police force

CHIEF Supt Matthew Damaru is retiring after 42 years in the police force, the last 21 years as director of the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate.
He told police officers during his farewell at the headquarters in Konedobu, Port Moresby, on Friday that he had done a lot for the country and it was their turn to carry on.
Chief Supt Damaru said the directorate was a special department that worked individually to ensure they fought corruption.
He said they experienced many challenges, including not completing investigations on time or not satisfying those who registered complaints, but many of the cases registered had been looked into and arrests had been made. Chief Supt Damaru told the officers that when going out to attend to complaints, they should not investigate the person, but the crime that the person had committed.
He said this would lead to officers getting enough evidence to prosecute the person.
“When you investigate the person, the person would make you compromise your job and you would lose the case and the public would not have trust in what police were doing,” Chief Supt Damaru said.
He joined the directorate in 2000 while the office was at Badili.
While working there, he requested for funding to build a new fraud office.
It was approved at a cost K7 million and was opened in 2004.
Chief Supt Damaru regarded this as one of his great achievements while being the head of the directorate. He said the other was creating the fraud division in some of the centres in the country and doing training for the officers because there was no fraud training at Bomana Police College.
Deputy director of the directorate Timothy Gitua thanked him for his service to the people of Papua New Guinea.
Gitua said what they learned from Chief Supt Damaru while working with him would continue.