Bird wows to amend criminal code

EAST Sepik Governor, Allen Bird is determined to bring to the floor of parliament, amendments to the criminal code.This is to cater for the penalty for the use of wire catapult, bush knives or anything that is used in committing a crime, a maximum of ten years.He made this comment in light of the worrying trend of lawlessness that the country is currently facing. The Governor said his province has been facing this worrying trend of lawlessness and is becoming a great concern for his people.“In my province we have a recent trend where young men produce their own weapons and carry them around heavily just waiting for the trouble so that they can use it on each other,” the Governor said. “We have so far lost five people through the use of these new weapons. We are also losing people through bush knives and our hospital has a record on this with over 60%. And I’m sure if you check some of the other hospitals, they will have similar statistics,” Mr. Bird elaborated. “We cannot play around with this anymore. Our young people are reckless. They do not respect the authority of our elders in the village anymore.”“Enough is enough. I want to firstly bring those amendments to the floor so that we make the penalty for the use of wire catapult, bush knives or anything that is used in committing a crime a maximum of ten years just like what we did for gun.”He added that after the amendments are made, the country will need to build bigger prisons/cells to cater for the arrests that going to come following the amendments.“In my province, I told my open members to put aside K5 million from the DSIPs to start building cell blocks in their respective districts. I will also build one at Boram using Provincial Service Improvement Programme (PSIP) funds.”In regards to the prosecutions, the Governor said it’s about time competent lawyers are recruited to become police prosecutors.“This will ensure prosecution of 90 per cent of is achieved and perpetrators actually sentenced,” Governor Bird said. Meanwhile, given the lawlessness situation in the country, the Governor went on explaining the shortfall of police officers in his province with the lack of government funding support in addressing law and order issues.“In Sepik, we have 160 police men and women on the active duty serving 4, 400 000 hectares of land with a population of 600 000 people. This is not enough. I checked our budget figures for this year and I note that our police are going to get K360 million in the budget allocation that we passed last year. And out of that, K285 million is going to go for wages and emoluments.”“I think this house needs to do something. When the new budget comes in, I personally want to see an increase in police department,” the Governor said. Governor Bird was speaking during grievances debate on the floor of parliament last Friday.