Marape to inspect borders

The National Main Stories

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
PRIME Minister James Marape will visit PNG’s borders with Indonesia, Australia and the Solomon Islands this week to inspect security measures put in place to prevent Covid-19 entering the country.
“If possible and the domestic flights are available, I will be visiting the border areas in West Sepik and Western and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville(AROB) to make sure that our response strategy for the border areas are stepped up and for Defence efforts to keep our country safe from the Covid-19,” he said.
“I spoke at 8.30pm (Thursday) with Indonesian President Joko Widodo to help us police our PNG-Indonesian land and sea borders in a joint effort.
“I have also talked with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to do the same for our Australian-PNG maritime border.
“And so we have to stop border becaus it encourages illegal crossing,” Marape said.
“We have identified hotspots for illegal crossing along the borders and also have identified isolation and quarantine spots along the border.
“We have relocated our two PNG Defence Force patrol boats to Daru (Western) and Vanimo (West Sepik).
“We have also relocated Water Police patrol boats to the border areas as well.
“And those illegal border crossers who are caught will pay hefty fine. So let me assure our citizens that you have no need to be uptight because of the extension of the state of emergency.
“We will be trying our absolute best to return to normalcy at the earliest stage.”
He said they were concentrating their efforts at the border because PNG’s health system was inadequate in treating coronavirus (Covid-19).
“We don’t have adequate bed space and a reliable system of health services to care for our citizens,” Marape said.
“So our efforts and foremost of our strategy in is defence and defence against Covid-19 from coming in.
“And as part of our defence strategy we have to extend the state of emergency as it will allow us to have one reference control point embedded in our Controller and Police Comm David Manning and with a team of experts under him are our health department experts, our law and justice experts and our economy sector experts,” he said.

2 comments

  • Honourable Prime Minister Mr James Marape, I hold much respect for you as a person and Prime Minister. However, as a liberal (free-thinking) citizen, I wish to challenge our Government and those that will come in the future government regimes not to think and speak to low of our system of health and its capacity. Alternatively, honourable James Marape and your government MUST establish a plan to succeed our current state and system of health to equate that of Americans, Australians, Germans, Italians etc. Let you not see this opportunity to develop our health system slipped our from your grip to make a difference for your citizens at this juncture. We are not semi-human beings having inferior level of life to have one low, inferior level of health system. I am deeply troubled by the fact that our National Health system and its capacity could not stand a chance to save many Papua New Guineans’ lives in one single space and time. I AM ONLY WISHING FOR YOU AND ALL OUR LEADERS TO MAKE A RIGHTFUL DECISION TO BEGIN WORKING ON OUR WORLD STANDARD OF HEALTH SYSTEM NOW!! GOD BE WITH YOU!

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