Pupils held for drinking

By SIMON NIANFOP

Underage students were apprehended by police for drinking alcohol and disorderly behaviour in Port Moresby last Friday

National Central District Supt operations Perou N’dranou said police received reports of students’ disorderly behaviour at 5-Mile next to the National Broadcasting Corporation. 

Upon inspection, the police found the students and apprehended them. Police juvenile justice and monitoring unit acting officer-in-charge Anna Wills said seven students were taken to the Boroko Juvenile Justice Centre. 

They included five female Grade 9 students.

All are believed to be from Gerehu Secondary except for one from Port Moresby Grammar School.

Some of the parents of the students were policemen who turned up to get their children last Friday and were advised to go to the centre instead, Wills said.

She said some children were confused and needed to be directed constantly on where to go and what to do.

“There’s always peer pressure and parents’ negligence that makes these children to act like this,” Wills said. Drinking and school fights were high in 2004 to 2010 but these changed because police carried out awareness drives in NCD schools and would take the programme into Central as well, she said.

A witness said there were more than 20 students involved in the booze session but some had managed to escape when police arrived.