Poor move to scale down hired vehicles

IT is heartening to read about Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga’s plan to end the hire of private vehicles for police operations.
He is aware about millions of kina being squandered in this exercise.
Car hire companies benefited immensely.
On the flip side, this exercise may be prema­-ture considering the fact that the government or the RPNGC has not bought new vehicles for the past
10 years.
Many of the vehicles on the road are donated by members of parliament and business houses.
Successive governments failed to fulfil their obligations to look after
the police force.
While Kulunga’s exercise will save millions of kina for the force, security cannot be compromised with such cost-cutting measures.
Scaling down of hire vehicles at this time is untimely and highly dangerous when the police do not have the capacity to re-fleet overnight.
It would be better to execute this exercise on a piecemeal approach, re-fleeting over a period of time and gradually banning private hire, or better still, re-fleeting the entire fleet and banning private hire altogether.

Wagl Wei
Baria village, Jiwaka