Jail commander claims to be suspended unfairly

By CLEMENT KAUPA
COMMANDER of the Buimo jail in Morobe, Chief Supt Simon Sobaim, claims he was suspended unfairly over an incident that occurred at the jail last Sunday.
An aggrieved Sobaim said there was no planned nor attempted mass break-out from the jail as claimed in a newspaper on Monday.
“I also reject the implication that the prison was unguarded at the time,” he said.
“I was there at Buimo and I can assure you that it was an isolated incident involving three remandees and the matter was quickly contained.”
He said there were sufficient guards around at the time considering a shortage of 40 Correctional Services (CS) officers who were on leave.
According to Sobaim, there were 51 officers on duty currently, with a prison population of 500 – one officer to 10 prisoners.
“It is quite a handful for the manpower on hand, but I have scaled down on work parties and have ordered my officers to be on high alert during the festive period,” Sobaim said.
“As for the story, it is pure misreporting using an anonymous source.
“This goes to show the kind of irresponsible journalism practised,” he said. 
Sobaim said he had confronted the newspaper’s Lae bureau with the facts of the circumstances relating to the incident and was assured that a retraction and apology would be published.
“However, the damage has already been done and I am also considering taking the paper to court for defamation.
“My career of more than 30 years with the Correctional Services is now destroyed.
“All because the reporter responsible for the story did not make any effort whatsoever to contact me prior to the story being published.   
“I am deeply disappointed.”
Meanwhile, the suspended commander has appealed to CS Commissioner Martin Balthazar to consider and withdrawing the indefinite suspension.
“I did write a status report about the incident on Monday.
“But I was prevented from sending it to the commissioner due to continuous power blackout that day.”
According to him, the report was finally sent at 1.30pm on Monday, but by then, Balthazar was already upset over the report and had gone ahead with the suspension notice.