Time and again I received voice of unhappiness including from retired senior police officers over the loss of Sarawak Constabulary and they want Sarawak Constabulary be restored.

They feel that Sarawakians should be given the opportunity to serve their own people and State. At the moment, there are too many police officers in Sarawak that are not Sarawakians and most of them, who are not Sarawakians, had poor command of English and hardly able to understand local Malay dialects too. This had made it very difficult for local people here to communicate with them to lodge police reports and solve crimes.

They also feel that Sarawakians police officers in the past had been discriminated for promotion and something need to be done to correct this. For the post of Commissioner of Police for Sarawak in the past sixty years, it was observed that there were only two Sarawakians holding this post. They were the late Tan Sri Hamdan Sirat and Datuk Awang Ehsan. The latter only served as Commissioner of Police for a short period only before he retired.

Sarawak, in fact, had many smart and intelligent police officers that were good enough to be Commissioners of Police for Sarawak, but, they were never been considered.

Most of the time, the post of Commissioner of Police for Sarawak were filled by police officers from the federation of Malaya. To say that local police officers are not qualified to hold the post would not be acceptable to Sarawakians.

When Tan Sri Hamdan Sirat retired, Datuk Aba Robiyel Huk should have been promoted but to the frustrations of Sarawakians, he was by-passed for promotion. This could make Sarawakians proud and a good good-bye for him before retirement. Instead, the post was given to an outsider.

The game kept on going – the government even by-passed the late Datuk Ramsay Jitam, a native, who was already the Deputy Commissioner of Police to become the Police Commissioner of Sarawak. Not long ago another Deputy Commissioner of Police, a Chinese, Dato Dr Chai Khin Chung who holds a doctorate degree was also never been promoted to hold the post of Commissioner of Police of Sarawak before he retired.

Now, the present Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mancha Ata, is a Dayak, but, will he ever be considered to hold the Commissioner of Police of Sarawak? Many Sarawakians have doubt unless miracle happens within the Unity government. May the government look into this matter to ease the tension of unhappiness that is growing now?

VOON LEE SHAN
President, Parti Bumi Kenyalang