By ORCHY REX
THE Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) Training College at Bomana will only take in 250 new recruits this year (2025) due to limitations in training facilities and resources.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Training, N’Dranou Perou made this known yesterday during a leadership workshop at the Koitaki Country Club.
The leadership workshop was attended by ACP Perou and his five directors, discussing ways to improve the quality of police training in the training college.
ACP Perou said it is important to put in place structured training to ensure well-educated and professional police officers graduate from the National Centre of Excellence at Bomana.
He acknowledged concerns about the quality of police personnel passing out from the college and assured the public that the training team is committed to improving standards.
“We know there are critics going around about the quality of policemen and women passing out of Bomana Police College, and this workshop is all about how we can improve on that and produce well-educated police professionals,” ACP Perou said.
The leadership workshop, sponsored by the PNG-Australia Policing Partnership (PNG APP), focused on the theme “Getting the Basics Right through Monitoring and Evaluation”.
ACP Perou stressed that without proper monitoring and evaluation, there would be no way to measure progress or ensure continuous improvement in police training.
“We can try as much as we can, but if we’re not monitoring our process and evaluating our performance, then there’s no measurement to see whether we are advancing or not,” he said.
He commended his five directors for stepping out of their comfort zones and dedicating time to the crucial discussion.
“I also would like to thank my directors. As you can see, five directors plus my staff officer, we were able to come up here for an important part of our calendar year, bringing the leaders of the National Centre of Excellence together to discuss leadership issues and ways to improve our performance at the training college,” ACP Perou said.
He revealed that the RPNGC is making efforts to expand training programs to accommodate more recruits while maintaining quality standards.
The ACP said the college currently conducts officer training through its Cadet Program, which runs for three years, with the current cohort set to graduate in 2026.
“We will recruit an additional cadet squad next year to make it two squads. We would like to have three squads of cadets by next year going forward,” he stated.
Furthermore, there are plans to bring in trainees from other Pacific Island countries to train alongside PNG police officers at Bomana.
“It’s likely that next year, we’re going to get on board other countries’ trainees to join the cadet program in RPNGC.
“If it works, we might also have other countries sending in their cadets as well as regular police officers, and we will send ours too,” ACP Perou said.
He clarified that the recruitment process is managed by the RPNGC’s Human Resource Division, while the training college is responsible for training the selected recruits.
“The training college does not involve in the recruitment processes, but we give the HR team our conditions on how many we can accommodate and get them trained,” he said.
Given the current infrastructure, ACP Perou said the training college can only take in 250 recruits per intake, and the plan is to have two training intakes per year instead of just one.
ACP Perou acknowledged the support of the Australian Government through the Pacific Policing Initiative, which has contributed to infrastructure developments at Bomana Training College.
