No fuel, court cancels sitting

The National Main Stories

By BOURA GORUKILA
A COURT has had to cancel its sitting for the second time because there was no fuel for police vehicles to bring accused people on remand from prison.
The Waigani Committal, Grade Five and Traffic courts had to cancel their sittings again yesterday because of the transport fuel problem.
They cancelled their sittings for the same reason a week ago.
Accused people detained at Bomana Prison could not be brought to the courthouse.
Police prosecutors too were not provided transport to come to court.
Police prosecutor Chief Sergeant Polon Koniu told The National yesterday that the fuel issue was holding up cases.
“We did not make it to the courthouse because of the same fuel and transport issues. Same applies for those on remand,” he said.
“This is stopping us from completing cases.
“But like I said before, we cannot continue to pay (fuel) from our own pockets (because it will) not be refunded.”
He said the prosecutors could not do much as all the matters listed yesterday had to be adjourned.
Chief Sgt Koniu said the issue needed to be addressed.
Police Minister Bryan Kramer told The National that as far as he was aware, there should be sufficient fuel for police operations.
“The RPNGC made an K6.1 million advance payment to Puma. This matter will be looked into to establish what exactly the issue is,” Kramer said.
Attempts to get comments from Police Commissioner David Manning were unsuccessful.

5 comments

  • What a laughing stock- no fuel…..what a lousy excuse coz we see almost every police vehicle on the road 7 days a week surely a request on the radio I bet one vehicle can assist.

    Proper management skills must be adopted, prioritise your resources, ordinary citizens are prioritising their expenses and the government also is trying to minimise costs then managers in charge of this must take heed and apply budgeting mechanism in place so everybodies time is not wasted and tax payers can appreciate where their taxes are going.

    • This is not a new problem. Fuel has a magical ability to disappear out of Police Vehicles all the time and possibly reappear in the tanks of wantoks PMV’s and Private Vehicles! Good, disciplined management is the only cure for a perennial problem.

  • Police should be raising revenue thru traffic road blocks…for instance, simply write a (TIN) for 1 smooth tyre @ K50.00 for 50 vehicles a day x 261 working days in a year x 22 provinces = So in a year the traffic road blocks alone would raise how much???? to support the nation’s annual budget.

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