Constabulary to reach 8,000 by 2015

Caption:   Police recruits marching to the parade arena

By MATTHEW VARI

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 (Midweek Chronicle, PNG)

POLICE numbers in the country are aimed to increase to a ceiling of 8,000 by 2015- according to Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga at the Commissioner’s Parade held last week, who said it was a challenge they were tasked with by the State.

He said that recruitment would be accelerated with the conversion of the Bomana Police College to become a centre for excellence.

“We have opened our recruit training programs afters more than 10 years off recruitment due to non-funding.”

“We have been tasked to increase the constabulary’s manpower strength from the current 5,000 nationwide, to 8,000 by the year 2015, which is a very huge challenge for us.”

“With the assistance of the Australian Government through the Australian Federal Police- we are transforming the Bomana Police College into a centre for excellence, with accreditation as a higher learning institution and this will help us to turn out more and better trained recruits and cadets.”

He said that the constabulary with its current manpower of 5,000-plus members were clearly outnumbered by the public with one officer to every 1,440 citizens in the country- a gleam comparison to the United Nations accepted ratio of police to the public of one officer to 450 persons.

“We have a total land area of 463,000 square kilometres and a population of over 7 million people.”

“By comparison, Singapore with a land mass of 720 square kilometres has a population of some 5 million-plus people and a police force of some 40,000 personnel.”

“The Australian State of New South Wales with a land mass of 809,444 square kilometres has roughly the same population of PNG and has more than 16,000 police personnel.”

He said that though both were developed nations compared to Papua New Guinea, their numbers were of ideal proposals in order to provide effective policing environments, which was something the government was now effectively looking to address.

Adding that the country was coupled with resource constraints and accessibility issues due to it geographical nature, with most of the 22 provinces not connected and only accessible by air.