Lihir locals educated to help police

DOMESTIC violence workshops conducted on Lihir Island, New Ireland, will help people on the island to acquire knowledge and skills to proactively police their communities.
The workshops, conducted under the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary  community policing programme, enabled participants to learn more about domestic violence, rape, child sexual abuse and sexual harassment and develop the knowledge and skills they already had to deal with these problems.
Addressing the closing of the workshop, the member for ward 11, Albert Bungim, said the police community education programme was part of the government’s “bottom-up planning” process which all leaders on the island must be involved in and support.
Bungim told participants that before leaders on the island could preach about sustainable development, “they must make it their business to ensure their people take ownership of all forms of development including education, health and law and order”.
He said sustainable development could only happen if people were actively involved in it as they could measure how they were benefiting from it.
Bungim said while leaders thought big and did not consider such programmes as important as economic activities which made money, people’s lives were more important.
He urged participants to practise what they had learnt to benefit their families, communities and wards.
He said challenges were always good, “as they will motivate them to do more for the good of their communities”.
Workshop trainer Sgt Sila Lokonba said the workshop completed plans by Lihir police to train a community-based crime prevention team that would help police to proactively police their communities.
Lonkonbo said it was one way of preventing crime and helping police to do their work and lighten their work of preventing crime, because participants will assist in their communities.
The workshop was the fourth for the four village court zones on Lihir, the first was for Auxillary policemen in the 15 LLG wards around Lihir Islands.