Gulf commander back home to lead North Fly police

GULF police commander Ins Silva Sika has been appointed the North Fly police commander in Western.
Silva told The National that he would start next week, replacing Supt Joseph Puri.
“It is good to go back home and serve people in my province,” he said.
He previously served in North Fly from 2012 to 2016. He was transferred to Gulf in 2017.
He said serving Gulf was a great challenge, especially the geographical boundaries and the land mass which made things difficult considering the lack of resources.
“We had resource constraints, especially travelling by sea to reach a location. It was very difficult but at least police presence was there after some days,” he said.
“A lot of illegal border activities were solved and sea piracy.”
Sika has been a police officer for more than 30 years.
North Fly covers Tabubil, Middle Fly and surrounding areas.
He said Western had the largest land mass which had two police commanders serving South Fly and North Fly. Police deal with international security border issues with Indonesia and Australia, drug smuggling and criminal activities.
They also deal with Southern Highlands, Vanimo and Gulf on the smuggling of illegal drugs into the province.
“Communities deserve to be treated fairly,” he said.
The North Fly district is the northernmost, smallest and the most remote of the three districts of the province.
With its remoteness, policing in the area was tough.
It shares an international boundary with Papua province of Indonesia in the west and borders Middle Fly in the south.
The southern area of North Fly is a massive plain, and the highlands begin around Tabubil, at the foot of the Star Mountains.
The south of this point is rather low lying, and doesn’t increase in altitude above a few hundred metres. The border with West Sepik, however, rises to 3,727 metres.
The total land mass of North Fly is 13,138 sqkm, larger than Enga.