BY LORETTA BRIGIDIA MANELE
A concerned citizen voices that a number of police vehicles in the country are in poor conditions because we have too many police drivers and vehicles are not properly cared for.
Former policeman, Mr Henry B Kahui expressed this after having learnt of the situation from an article published by Solomon Star on Feb 13, 2018, titled “vehicle shortage”.
He said that from how he sees it, while we have too many police drivers on the road some of them who are not fit to drive still take on the wheel and vehicles are not properly managed which may be the result of accidents.
Kahui also mentioned that police officers are not effective with their patrols and do not visit areas that have high crime rates.
On the other hand, he shares his experience and compares it to today’s police force.
Kahui explained that back then they used less than 50 vehicles which lasted for more than 10 years.
“We had to go through a 3 month training where we learned how to care for our vehicles and a little on basic law before moving on to various police stations that needed drivers. Drivers would have to check the vehicles before we used them.
“Although we did not have as much vehicles as today, we did our part in terms of patrolling around areas where crimes were committed on a daily basis. We carried out foot beat patrol where we walked around, patrolling around places from 10pm-6am. We did about 4 to 5 patrols before daylight and did not depend much on vehicles,” he said.
Kahui furthers that in order for RSIPF to safeguard our vehicles they must to change the direction of how their vehicles are managed and suggests that they recruit police drivers instead of allowing any police officers to drive.
