A GOOD DEED or A BAD DEED?

 

The first traffic lights in Port Moresby.

RED TRAFFIC LIGHT ‘COPS’

IT was a wet rainy day. The traffic lights at Waigani in Port Moresby, as they always do on a drizzly day, decided to quit.

Out of the rain, a young man stepped into the muddy, puddly centre stage, among the potholes and poles of the traffic lights.

Like a grand conductor on the centre stage of a giant auditorium, he began to conduct a choir of rushing cars and buses, drivers honking widely, ‘buai’ spittle flying at his feet, wheels missing his heels, some acknowledgements on the green, some surprises on the red, and some applause on the amber, and mostly a deluge of homebound commuters happy to be just going home.

Job well done, said a lot of people, when his hearty deed was uploaded on social media. His afternoon of fame was remembered thankfully by many.

But the red flag is, is it legal or illegal for a citizen to pretend to be a traffic cop and direct traffic at a busy intersection?

We would like to praise him but we cannot, lest we be accused of hypocrisy. We print stories of imposters who pretend to be policemen or women, who go around harassing and even terrorizing the innocent public including setting up illegal roadblocks until, by some amber chance means, they are caught and stopped.

For us to join the community spirit of elevating such a blatant disregard for the law would be unjustified. We cannot legalise the act of people pretending to be police or army or warders. It is against the law and it is wrong.

A spotter directing traffic during the construction of Poreporena Freeway 1997.

Therein lies a major behavioral problem in our country.

Papua New Guineans tend to think that breaking the law a little bit to suit a situation is okay. What they don’t realise is that when breaking it bit by bit becomes a habit, and that opens the door to the biggest problem currently faced in PNG – corruption.

The man may have had a genuine concern but the truth is he is not a trained cop, let alone a traffic cop. The question flagged by many commentators is the ‘what ifs?’

What if a driver in a hurry thought he was just a traffic light buai seller and gave him a not so soft mighty nudge with his fender? 

Or what if two cars crashed as a result of our wannabe traffic officer’s directions? What would happen if he was run over? 

Would his relatives burn down Waigani police station, since it’s just 10 metres away? Would they claim compo from the police department?

And the most important question: Where was the traffic cop on that day? 

On that note, every major intersection in the city that has traffic lights should be shut down and replaced by roundabouts.

Traffic lights are expensive to maintain. And when they shut down, we don’t want a half an hour wannabe public traffic cop holding up the traffic.

a Post-Courier editorial

Ela Beach, when their was no traffic lights.