POLICE Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho made an urgent request yesterday for the acquisition of containers to store drugs and drug-related equipment confiscated during raids across the country.
“We are running out of space,” he said.
He lauded the public for providing information that had led to arrests and acknowledged his officers for the outstanding success of police operations over the past 14 months.
“Last year, we launched major drug operations and we have quite a significant amount of drugs in our exhibits which we are trying to get the courts to allow us to destroy because storage is becoming an issue.”
Brig-Gen Qiliho said acquiring storage containers was a priority because of the huge quantity of drugs nabbed during raids and the need to ensure his officers remained focused on the task at hand.
“It’s about the safety of it (drugs) and also that it doesn’t tempt my officers into illegal activities involving those things we have in our possession.
“That’s an issue for me. “Today (yesterday), I am going to give out directives, we need to purchase a container because of the drugs that we are pulling out from all over the country.
“We just don’t have any more storage space for it and we need to put it in secure containers while we wait for the court processes to go through.”
In the past week alone, $31 million worth of cocaine was seized in a house in Caubati and Planet Haze nightclub in Nadi was also raided, resulting in the discovery of an alleged laboratory used to produce illicit drugs.
Police also uprooted and confiscated more than a thousand plants believed to be marijuana from two separate farms located at Lagalevu and Waisalima on Kadavu this week.
