Papua Province's Border and Foreign Cooperation Agency (BPKLN) is pushing for the construction of fences along non-formal lines, to minimize the inflow of people from PNG territory.
"Not only fences, it may also be a kind of security post on a number of these non-formal lines. Indeed, the fence that must be built is very long, but ideally so that the people can be better monitored," said Head of Border and Foreign Cooperation Agency of Papua Province Suzana Wanggai in Jayapura, Wednesday.
Suzana admits, until now there are no guardrails or cross-border posts on these non-formal lines.
On the other hand, there are still many PNG citizens who have gardens in Papua. On the contrary, people from PNG and Papua often go in and out using the non-formal route.
"Indeed for border residents who want to cross, they already have a letter of border crosser or population administration. But because there is a pandemic formal lines are closed, so most people use non-formal lines. This is our challenge," he admits.
Therefore, he added, the challenge will be addressed immediately so that no citizens are harmed. Moreover, currently, cases of COVID-19 transmission in the PNG region are quite high. So it needs increased surveillance.
"If the formal line has been closed for a long time. So this non-formal path that does need to be supervised".
"Therefore, we immediately tighten supervision by immediately meeting the relevant parties, to be able to discuss supervision on non-formal lines in an effort to minimize COVID-19," he concluded.