P-NG Police Force 50 Per

Cent. Below Strength

From Our Own Correspondent MORESBY. April 7.

CRITICISM of the Police Force by the Town Advisory Council in Port Moresby over recent months drew a spirited reply when the Com missioner (Colonel J. S. Grimshaw) was invited to address the Council.

Colonel Grimshaw said that he had only half the number of European officers he needed and that it was im possible to give the town a 24-hours a-day police service.

He recalled that last year he went to Australia and selected 58 men from 133 interviewed; but finance cuts ended the matter, “With more European officers we could cut crime by 30 per cent.,'"

Colonel Grimshaw declared. He said that Port Moresby had one native policeman to every 211 natives and one European policeman to every 2,691 head of population. The Australian aver age was one policeman to every 696 civilians.

About the same time, but in Madang, the Chief Judge, Mr. Justice Phillips was taking steps to ease the load of work on police by ordering corporal punishment for the first time since the war. The offender was a native found guilty of in decently dealing with a European child. Judge Phillips ordered that the native be “once privately whipped with a cane, the whipping to be one of eight strokes” and be im prisoned for six months with hard labour.

Native pastors, Masive of NG and Manovaki of BSI, recently attended an SDA Conference in Perth.