Dear Editor – Many readers of your newspaper this morning at home and abroad would have been utterly appalled to have read the article alleging that a mother on Ulawa Island in the Makira Province was left paralyzed last Saturday following an argument with her partner who, allegedly, was intoxicated at the time.
This latest domestic violence atrocity, if true, must re-focus the attention of all those concerned with looking into the causes of family and domestic violence to what I have always said is a major contributing factor and that is alcohol abuse.
There are large programs afoot with money available to several UN sponsored organizations and agencies to investigate the causes and effects of family violence in the Solomon Islands but my hope is that the program coordinators will seriously consider what needs to be done to curtail the abuse of alcohol, including home brew known locally as ‘Kwaso’ and the cultivation and use of marijuana.
Police manpower and resources are limited and to try to effectively control alcohol and substance abuse it is more than timely, in my view, for the rehabilitation of the Solomon Islands Development Trust (SIDT) to re-start the organization’s effective village level counselling and advisory work.
It is also necessary to give attention to what I have often mentioned as the need to restore the traditional justice system in which village concerns, including domestic violence, family violence and alcohol abuse can be holistically dealt with under the authority of village chiefs and elders.
Frank Short
Former police commissioner
Bangkok, Thailand
