Goma, 18 June 2012 – A sizeable delegation, made of national and provincial authorities, donors and United Nations officials, was in Mugunga, Nord-Kivu province, on Friday, 15 June 2012, for the official inauguration of the new training center for the Congolese National Police (PNC) there.

The officials at the ceremony included the Minister of the Interior, Decentralization and Customary Affairs, the Nord-Kivu Governor, the Congolese National Police (PNC) Commissioner, the Canadian ambassador to the DRC, as well as several representatives of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), including MONUSCO Police Commissioner, General Abdallah Wafy.

The ceremony featured an impressive parade, as well as demonstrations of public order maintenance skills by the 300 PNC trainees currently taking courses at the new instruction center.

The parade was followed by several speeches, including one delivered by the PNC Commissioner, Charles Bisengimana, and one by the MONUSCO Police Commissioner-General, General Wafy.

In his speech, Commissioner Bisengima thanked the different partners who had helped make "this project become a reality". He then addressed the police trainees, exhorting them to show "greater discipline and loyalty as a requisite for conducting successful pacification and stabilization operations around the country; and to shun the spirit of tribalism and to serve the motherland."

General Wafy, on his part, addressed the Congolese authorities, reassuring them of MONUSCO's support to ensure that police officers throughout the country receive training. He also announced that further awareness-raising activities would be conducted to strengthen the collaboration between the national police force and the population.

The construction of the Mugunga training center was completed in February 2012. The center, with its twenty-six buildings, covers a surface area of approximately 3000 square meters. The construction work was executed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) within the framework of the International Security and Stabilization Support Strategy (ISSSS) in support of the Government's Stabilization and Reconstruction Programme (STAREC) for areas emerging from conflict in the eastern DRC, at the total cost of three million US dollars. The project was funded through the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, and the Government of Canada.

Clara Padovan/ MONUSCO