Former police boss queries K5m for homes

 FORMER Mamose ACP commander Giosi Labi is querying a K5 million given by the Somare government in 2009 to build new homes for 112 families at Lae’s Bumbu Barracks.

Labi claimed the families were relocated and the rundown houses destroyed between 2009 and 2010 after the K5 million was released but to date nothing has come of the money.

A visit yesterday confirmed the heart of the barracks where buildings that housed the families once stood was overgrown with bush and the internal road network deteriorated.

The parameter fence separating the barracks from the exploding squatter settlements along the Bumbu River is barely standing upright, with many sections completely gone.

Medium height concrete posts, concrete steps and protruding PVC pipes could still be seen among the bush, the only indications that houses had once stood there.

It is now apparent that a ring of buildings inside the parameter fence along the Bumbu Road to Eriku and along the inside road to Nawae and Timber College are just the shells of the barracks.  

“Where is the K5 million now?” Labi asked yesterday in light of the arrival of members of Australia’s Federal Police in Lae.