It was a late afternoon in Port Moresby as I was heading back from meeting up with some clients. A normal day by any standards with nothing special on the agenda. We were heading back into Gerehu, the sky was overcast with a few clouds making things a bit darker than usual. Always on guard in this area as its pretty much the wild west when it comes to raskols we approached Gerehu Stage 6 where our factory is located. As we pulled into Koloka Street there was about 7 young guys standing around the bottom entrance gate to the factory. This normally would be a sure sign that we shouldn’t enter and should of kept driving. Our drivers know that they shouldn’t stop in such a situation, they weren’t covering their faces with bandanas or masks so my driver thought it was safe to head to the main gate, about 15 meters away from the bottom gate. It also didn’t help that one of the guys was clearly the nephew of my driver so my driver figured it would be safe to go on ahead as he thought they were just picking up some scrap timber.
At the time we didn’t have any security on the top gate as we didn’t care too much about those things before these held ups happened. So we waited for the gate to open and my staff took an abnormally long amount of time to open it due to the fact that they were pretty busy. It was about 4 pm when the 7 young men started to make their way up to the top gate, and as they split up and started to surround the car I knew straight away that something was wrong. Too late to react or do anything and just as I realized what was happening the car was surrounded with a home made one barrel shotgun in front of the car and I was being pulled out of the car forcefully grazing my arm with a couple machetes touching my neck. The feeling of the dirty blades grazing my neck was a surreal experience. Not saying that it was a good experience but it was definitely more death threatening than the shotgun in front me. As the men emptied my pockets and took about K700 (about $250AUD), my phone and keys. They quickly finished off with taking my belongings (not that I had that much) I sat and watched as they took my drivers bilong (PNG style bag) as someone had obviously tipped them off with wrong information that he might of hand money in their. Not that he had any money anyway.
The raskols had to get away quick as it was my factory after all and it was only a few minutes later that my staff inside realized what was happening and the security bell sounded. It only took a moment for all 70 of my staff to be outside the front gate chasing down the raskols. (its amazing how fast they can react when they could barely win a soccer match haha) IT was good to know that their reaction speed in a situation such as a hold up was second to none. Half the staff had gone out the back entrance to try and cut them off while the other half jumped on the back of the truck cutting the bad guys off in another direction. The raskols were not that smart in holding me up right in front of my factory. They all ran one direction and had to cut their losses and try to jump the fence to run through some neighbors factories just to get away. This was time consuming and they probably injured themselves in the process. But the time they could reach the other side of the neighbors yards my truck with 30 men armed with knives sticks and stones had caught up to them and chased 3 or 4 of them down up a hill. 3 or 4 were severely beaten while trying to get away before being apprehended and taken to the local Gerehu police station. 3 of them got away and the K700 kina was not to be seen again. I headed down to the police station to make a statement which I wouldn’t of done if we didn’t catch any. The raskols were pretty badly beaten as is the way in PNG so at this point I was a bit worried about their payback system. But more on that a little bit later.
I made my statement to the police officers whom nowadays we have on speed dial in case of emergency situations such as these. Although I did not file any charges as no harm was done I was able to get my keys back which were the most important things otherwise we have to change out about 50 locks in the factory (as we had to do last time I was held up) The raskols were probably beaten up again by the police before being transferred to holding cells at the Boroko Police station. At this point I headed to the settlement from where the raskols lived and spoke to the parents, on the back of my truck with several of my staff reassuring them that over time work was still scheduled for that night. Feeling a bit distraught with some adrenaline running through my veins it took a while before the adrenaline was to wear off. It was important for me to speak to the parents so they didn’t miss understand me and the fact that their children were pretty badly beaten, not to mention stuck in a police holding cell. My trusted staff had spoken to the people they knew in this particular settlement and they understood my position and informed me that they had told their children to leave us alone. Reassured that I was not going to be victim to any form of payback I headed home.
The next day I had to make another statement at the Boroko Police station as the first statement that I had made seemed to have gone missing. I made my statement, again without naming any names or pointing the finger as nothing that bad had happened to me in this hold up. Mentioned that I wouldn’t be pressing charges and then headed home. It was a couple days later when my phone magically was found and returned to me by someone who pretty much bribed me to give him a job if I wanted the phone back. I could of just given him money but if I had done that his life would have been no better and he would of still been on the street. So I gave him a job in the sawmill and had my phone returned.
It was a couple days later that the back door of the phone holding cell in Boroko was ‘accidentally’ left open and the raskols had escaped. Not really that worried as I had spoken to the parents I tried to be diplomatic about the situation. But the guys who held me up had all disappeared back to the villages in the deep, deep forests of PNG. To this day I haven’t seen or spoken to any of those people who held me up. They are probably around but as they are leaving me alone I have no quarrels. All in all, the second hold up experience was much easier than the first and I was a lot more alert to my surrounding’s. If anything good came of it, I now see the wider picture when it comes to driving in PNG and I am always alert to the possibility of another hold up. In saying that we have tightened our security measures greatly and thus far, we haven’t been the victims of any more PNG related crime as of yet (touch wood).