City streets ‘safe to walk’

LAE city’s central business district is clean from peddlers and pick pockets.
Women and children are free to walk into shops, banks and back to the bus stop to head home – all courtesy of Menyamya Morobe Security Services.
The bow, arrow and club wielding guards stepped up their vigilance on the streets when two of their members were attacked by “street urchins”.
A professional women said it was “by time someone took a really rough-and-tough approach to policing the streets of Lae”.
The Menyamya guards were retaliating to an attack at 7th Street, next to the Top Town bus stop.
An officer with the Lae City Council said a gang had cornered the two men in front of the Lae Central Court arcade around lunch and started beating them.
Both guards were taken to the hospital after they were rescued by the Lae City Authority policing unit.
One had received a knife wound on the head while the other suffered a broken lip.
Thirty minutes later two other guards and a number of men, believed to be from Menyamya, armed with bush knives, clubs  and bows and arrows turned up at the Lae City Authority premises after a suspected peddler was caught.
They bashed him but were prevented by policing unit officers from causing further harm.
Officer in Charge of the Lae city Authority policing unit Sgt Simon Ipam has condemned the actions of the street hawkers.
He said the MMSS were engaged during the festive period to assist them in policing law and order at the main bus stops in the city under the Klinim bus stop operation.
Since then, street vending and other illegal activities at the bus stops have been contained and the public have felt safe again, Sgt Ipam said.
He said the two guards were attacked because their presences at the bus stops has prevented illegal activities that street peddlers and hawkers depend on to survive.