Understanding the problem

THE beginning of any solution starts with understanding the problem in detail.
In a nutshell, our country’s social, political, economic, crime and security issues are directly related to poverty.
The same can be said for many contagious diseases that affect our people – TB and HIV/AIDS, cholera and even gender-based violence issues.
These are linked one way or another to poverty. Many NGO programmes also need to readjust their focus on development goals to increase the attention to root causes of poverty instead of addressing downstream symptoms.
With our police force, we have seen massive internal issues that need to be sorted and these also can be said to be caused by the whole PNG society’s current trends.
Focus on symptoms can take up more resources than to start a shift in programmes that attend to root causes of poverty.
In this case, the support to train the police force may spread to the whole force in courses that broaden officers’ minds to understand the root cause of current public-police (law and order) issues.
This can then help police to understand their roles/duties and limitations before carrying out their duties.
Officers and the general public could then understand the very act of following set procedures/protocols is actually the beginning of resolving issues, and not just getting to the crux sometimes by shortcuts.

Alois Nomenda;
Port Moresby.