Sea piracy a concern
SAMARAI-MURUA MP Isi Henry Leonard says that criminals are strangling efforts to deliver much needed government services and economic projects in his large maritime electorate in Milne Bay
“We are really at the mercy of the pirates,” he said.
“We are spending most of our funds, time and energy in chasing them instead of delivering our programmes.
“We just spend K500,000 last month in deploying a mobile squad from Port Moresby to hunt them (pirates) down in our many isolated islands.”
Leonard said this on Friday during the presentation of the Samarai-Murua 2018 DSIP acquittal report to the Department of Implementation and Rural Development secretary Aihi Vaki.
“The increase of sea piracy is also another very important factor that has caused a lot of business confidence to drop in the district and also affected the movement of people,” he said.
Leonard said this had prompted a shift in their development agenda and the focus now was on creating a safer environment in which to do business and provide services while also ensuring investors in major projects such as mines, agriculture and fisheries were not affected.
Leonard said a lack of banking facilities and suppliers in the district also had negative impacts.
One thought on “Sea piracy a concern”
It is good to see Samarai Murua MP doing something about addressing sea piracy in Milne Bay waters especially in his electorate. I am wandering want is Kiriwina Goodenough and Esa’ala MPs doing now on this issue. we the people in these electorates are silently suffering from piracy activities. Please all MPs work together and setup water police bases at strategic locations such as east cape and empower them by giving them boats to patrol the seas. Also improve the communication towers on the Islands & establish toll free numbers so people can report piracy activities to police on time.
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