BY MAVIS NISHIMURA PODOKOLO
EMPOWER Pacific in Solomon Islands has stepped in to improve the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force duty of care to its officers and reduce the risk of psychological harm.
This was done on Thursday through an agreement signing to conduct counseling intervention for police officers in Honiara
Counselling is an important process for a robust organisation like RSIPF. Officers most times go through traumatic cases especially the police response team which and will be very distressing for them.
For instance they encounter situations like injury or threats to employee’s life on duty, victim/body recovery, homicides, suicides, death or serious injury to baby and high attendants at postmortems
Empower Pacific country manager Mrs Lavinia Dakei said they will only provide counselling in terms of stress management for traumatic cases to help support the wellbeing of Police officers on how they can support their work.
“With that I am very humbled and pleased RSIPF has chosen Empower pacific to carry out this essential service for the police officers. Through my experience of work I’ve worked with military/police officers and I see counseling is a need in this domain.
“They need it to support their work and wellbeing so that they can be productive and active in their demanding work,” Dakei said.
Dakei expressed Empower pacific has singed this particular service with other organisations and this one of them especially to empower and ensure psychological approach towards employees is taken into consideration.
The agreement witnessed on Thursday is a one year contract and is of Empower Pacific’s Employment Assistance Programme in Solomon Islands and was held yesterday at the Empower Pacific office in Honiara.
