Gamblers a big headache

ALMOST every day police use either a loudhailer, tear gas or gunshots into the air to disperse gamblers at the Manu bus stop and market in NCD.
Lately these gambling activities have become more brazen and rowdy that school children, mothers and senior citizens are finding the bus stops unsafe, especially when wanting to catch buses late in the afternoon.
There does not seem to be any real long-term solution to this problem and all we see is a daily cat-and-mouse game between the police, the betel nut sellers and gamblers.
On the afternoon of March 14, police fired at least eight tear gas canisters to disperse the illegal gamblers but the tear gas also affected nearby residents, especially children and infants.
We, the residents who live within two and 300 metres of the bus stop and market, are tired and fed up of these lawbreakers and wish they can return to their villages and test out their own local law and order control systems – both government and cultural.
We cannot continue to pretend that we do not have a vagrancy problem and an unsustainable influx of migrants with no means of sustaining themselves in the city. And, sadly, many people who migrate to Port Moresby prey on unsuspecting victims and gullible people and peddle illicit drugs.
Unless something concrete is done to control this unsustainable influx of migrants into Port Moresby, these illegal activities will grow and be even more difficult to control.
And there will never be any real end to the harassments, bag-snatchings and thievery that have become synonymous with our local markets, regardless of whether we spent millions of kina to build and modernize them.

Fed-up Manu resident
NCD