By Clifford Faiparik
Security election operations for the 2022 National elections in National Capital District have been beefed up amid matters of security concerns. National Capital District Metropolitan Commander Superintendent Gideon Ikumu says election Security operations has tightened and that security members deployed for polling duties do not know their polling stations.“The security members will only know on the polling day which areas they will be station to. This is to rule out any sorts of bribery to the members by certain candidates at the polling venue. And I also call on candidates to approach me before the writs will be issued on Thursday to raise concern of any security matters. They should not approach me after the writs are been issued”.
Ikumu said that there will be 361 polling areas throughout the NCD. “And there will 31 new polling areas especially in the North East electorate to cater for new settlements like Manuti, White Rock, Bush wara etc. We are looking at 1600 security members and that will be made up of members of the PNG Defence Force, PNG Correctional Services and the Royal PNG Constabulary. We have new 155 Police Reservists who have recently passed out at Bomana Police College and they will be part of the security operations. We are also recalling former Police Reservists who have been stood down by the Police Commissioner. We have called out an expression of interest for these former Reservist and we will screen them and engage only the ones who have good record with us. We require a lot of men because of increased polling areas. And it will be a one day poling only”.
Ikumu said that they are now finalizing their security operation plan in order to request support from the Commissioner’s office for logistics support like weapons and vehicles. “Currently we have our intelligence Officers moving around NCD doing surveillances and collecting intelligence to finalize our security operations. We are all set to provide security for a free, fair and safe election in NCD. There will be a response unit to be on standby to polling areas that are prone for unruly behavior. We are ready to deal will unruly behavior and disturbance that will come from people who are not on the common roll and those who want to do double voting. We will discourage double voters who will be traveling in truckloads to more than one polling stations to vote. Traffic Officer will set up 24 hour road blocks to prevent truckloads of voters from moving from polling areas to cast votes for more than one time. We will be limiting the movement of people. We also have an isolated building to detain unruly people and they will be locked up for one day and will not vote”.
