Ralph Ban­warie

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Com­man­der of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice, Snr Supt Ryan Khan, has chas­tised Va­len­cia res­i­dents for the low turn-out to a re­cent TTPS Town Hall meet­ing at the Va­len­cia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

“Look at the hand­ful of peo­ple at­tend­ing this meet­ing. They are the ones less af­fect­ed. I would ex­pect as a large com­mu­ni­ty, this hall would have been filled to ca­pac­i­ty,” Khan told the gath­er­ing at the meet­ing last Wednes­day.

“Va­len­cia is a very large com­mu­ni­ty with a pop­u­la­tion of 8,000, so what is the rea­son the peo­ple are not at­tend­ing?”

Not­ing that there were is­sues with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, which the meet­ing was de­signed to ad­dress and find so­lu­tions to, he added, “The peo­ple pre­fer to stay at the edge of the road and talk and talk, but not come and say what they have to say.”

He ad­vised the peo­ple of Va­len­cia to come out and say some­thing and if they want­ed to change their com­mu­ni­ty, they must be part of that change.

Khan re­called that dur­ing a pre­vi­ous TTPS meet­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty last year, there was al­so a low turnout. He said the meet­ing was prop­er­ly ad­ver­tised on so­cial and oth­er me­dia, but the peo­ple of Va­len­cia seemed not to be in­ter­est­ed in at­tend­ing.

“I don’t think the peo­ple present here rep­re­sent the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

“So I think they need to do bet­ter in com­ing out. If you want to fix is­sues, you need to come out and say some­thing.”

Act­ing In­spec­tor Harp­er, head of Va­len­cia Po­lice Post, in re­sponse to the is­sue of peo­ple smok­ing in pub­lic, said it was a tick­etable of­fence but their hands were tied be­cause there were no tick­et books.

He al­so point­ed out that re­sources like ve­hi­cles were short and the po­lice could not re­spond to all re­ports im­me­di­ate­ly, but ad­vised peo­ple to come to Va­len­cia or any po­lice sta­tion and make their re­port. He said of­fi­cers were al­so now be­ing sent for re­train­ing to im­prove their be­hav­iour to­wards mem­bers of the pub­lic. Res­i­dent Char­maine Pavy said, “I have a se­ri­ous prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the long week­ends with the noise. My 89-year-old moth­er is dis­turbed and calls on the po­lice to do some­thing. She is aware that EMA is re­spon­si­ble for this but be­lieves the po­lice can still do some­thing.”

Res­i­dent Rakesh Singh mean­while called for more foot pa­trols, as it was an ob­vi­ous way of en­gag­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic. He asked the po­lice to en­gage with the house­wives and peo­ple at home to build trust and con­fi­dence.

Singh al­so called for the po­lice to re­gain the re­spect and con­fi­dence of the peo­ple by re­turn­ing their trust.