Welder blasted for making gun

 By JUNIOR UKAHA

WELDERS must use their skills to do good things and not to make weapons, a magistrate said yesterday. 

Lae district court magistrate Nasaling Bingtau was sentencing Daniel Lim, a youth from Nawaeb, Morobe, to five years in jail for possessing a homemade shotgun.

The court heard that Lim was caught by police with the gun at 2am near the Lae Secondary School, on Bumbu Road, in Eriku, on Oct 6.

Lim was in the company of two others when a police patrol unit spotted them. Lim admitted the offence. 

He told the court that he was a welder with Lau Construction Ltd and that the gun was his.

“I made this gun,” he told the court.

“Did you go to school to learn how to make guns?” Bingtau asked. 

“Does the company you work for make guns?” 

Lim said he had made the gun himself and it had nothing to do with the company.

Bingtau said he recently jailed a welder for five years for making a gun.

“Welders should think about feeding their family and not making guns.”