Ex-premier welcomes commitment to address lawlessness

FORMER Morobe premier and provincial peace and good order committee chairman Joshua Haggai has welcomed Lae MP-elect Loujaya Toni’s commitment to address the root problems of lawlessness in the second city.Joshua, who is president of the Salamaua local level government area, was tasked by the Morobe provincial government last November to deal with the aftermath of the ethnic uprising by Morobean youths who targeted people of highlands origin following increasing petty crimes on the streets in the industrial hub.Joshua pledged to work closely with Toni to see that the law and order situation in the city, especially issues relating to last November’s ethnic uprising, were resolved.
Toni is Morobe’s first female parliamentarian and, in her maiden speech, pledged on Sunday that every Lae city resident would be accounted for through bio-metric registration that would see the city have a database of its people.“I will take ownership and responsibility; the law and order problem is nothing, when I have organised our youth of Lae city so every youth is productively engaged to meet the demands of industrial city of Lae, the law and order will go down,” she said.