Proposed Police Bill

Timoci Gaunavinaka, Nausori

There is no doubt that any law made in 1965, like the Fiji Police Act, will have many out-ofdate parts that may not be accurately relevant to the situation we face today. This is considering the evolution of crime and various new technological tools that now enables it.

Fiji, like many other nations around the world, needs to update and upgrade its laws and legislations to enable it to deal with modern challenges heaped against it to protect its people.

There is no doubt that the Proposed Police Bill, whose consultations are made through funding by the New Zealand Government and United Nations Development Programme and whose writeup was guided and assisted by the New Zealand Police Force, is the right path to take.

Problems often highlighted by critics and the media against our Police force were usually in the “implementation of the law” stage and it is vital that we must do this part right !!!

We understand that the New Zealand Police will be training our Police force on how to adjust and implement these proposed changes in legislations, but please, do not make this a one-off event.

We need to make it a long term programme (covering 10 to 15 years at least) involving monitoring, assessments and analysis (by the NZ Police, UNDP and other stakeholders) of the implementation and its aftermath. They must ensure there are no negative “homemade” side-effects or unnecessary collaterals.

I believe that this is necessary because it will take some time to mold the minds of many of our Police officers to ensure that these extended Police rights are not abused nor used to justify issues they were not intended for.

The laws and legislations can be perfect, but if its implementation are not done in a correct and effective way, we may not get the intended results.

This is why it needs to be monitored, assessed and analysed after been implemented until such a time it is confirmed to have synchronised well with what they were intended for.