Staff shortage slows processing

The National National

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
FAMILY sexual violence cases take longer for police to process due to lack of manpower and office space, and sometimes parties involved are reluctant to report to the station.
National Capital District Metropolitan Superintendent Perou N’Dranou explained some causes for the delays following concerns by FSV victims about the time it took – most of them many months – to get their cases sorted out.
“We have established offices to respond to family sexual violence cases in all stations in the city, including Boroko,” N’Dranou said.
He said misinformed public usually thought that Boroko was the only station that had the unit.
“You go to every police station, there is an office there to deal with FSV cases,” he said.
N’Dranou said any police officer could take the case on but just because the decree of the case was so high the Police Department decided to create special units to deal with them as investigators needed special skills to tackle them properly.
He said once the cases were reported, two main factors contributed to them being prolonged.
“One of them is that the parties or partners involved mostly take a while to come in and really talk about the case to be solved or they are just reluctant.
Secondly, N’Dranou said, they just did not have enough manpower to deal with the cases.
He said at the moment one officer was dealing with about 20 cases.
He said another factor was that the FSV unit did not have a safe house to keep the victims.
All Port Moresby stations have an information monitoring system to keep updated data on reported cases in the city.
N’Dranou said the instalment of information technology system was one of the measures to help them address crimes.
Computer Zone started setting up the database system late last year and have already completed it for the FSV unit, he said.
“When family sexual violence cases are reported at respective stations, people at Boroko will no longer wait after 24 hours to receive the information,” Computer Zone marketing manager Joe Iamo said.