Committee: Don’t incite trouble in city

By ELLEN TIAMU
THE peace and good order committee in Lae is appealing to people including intending candidates to refrain from holding meetings or making statements that could incite trouble in the city.
Lae has been declared a fighting zone following ethnic clashes and civil unrest last month.
Committee member and works chairman Charlie Foike said last Friday that intending candidates should not use the fights, which had resulted in at least six deaths, as a campaign issue.
He said the situation in the city was still very volatile and any wrong thing said could incite further trouble and create unnecessary anxiety.
Foike said they should be assisting in making sure the city was trouble-free.
Speaking following the presentation of foodstuff by the Ahi people to various haus krais in Lae, he deplored comments by some community leaders at the settlements that the peace and good order committee comprised members whose LLGs were outside Lae and were not too familiar with settlement and block matters.
Foike said committee members lived there and knew people who lived in the area.
And as they were appointed by the PEC, they could make strong decisions in the interest of peace and normalcy.
He said community leaders who genuinely wanted to make a change in Lae were welcome to contribute ideas and assist voluntarily from their hearts.
Ahi villagers of Butibam, Kamkumung, Yalu and Sipaia, assisted by the three villages of Yalu last Friday distributed a second lot of foodstuff to nine locations in and on the outskirts of the city where fighting had occurred.
In making their presentation to the committee, they said they had nothing against other ethnic groups but wanted peace to return to Lae.
The villagers said they sympathised with the relatives of those who had died and people who had been injured or had lost property during the unrest.