T

he North Sumatra Police and the Aceh Police agreed to set up a joint command station to curb marijuana trafficking from Aceh to other regions in the archipelago.

The agreement was reached in an official meeting between police chiefs at the North Sumatra Police headquarters in Medan on Wednesday. The event was attended by officials from North Sumatra and Aceh, including officials from the prosecutor'€™s offices and the Bukit Barisan Military Command.

Aceh Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Husein Hamidi said both police forces were focusing their attention on widespread marijuana and crystal methamphetamine trafficking from Aceh through North Sumatra. He added that police had destroyed many marijuana plantations in Aceh, most of which were concentrated in Aceh Besar and North Aceh.

Husein said marijuana from Aceh was generally smuggled out through East Aceh to North Sumatra and then to Jakarta. He added that the police had currently tightened security in East Aceh to prevent marijuana trafficking out of the province.

'€œWe have tightened security at a number of places in East Aceh,'€ said Husein, hoping the safety measures could minimize marijuana trafficking from Aceh to other regions.

North Sumatra Insp. Gen. Eko Hadi Sutedjo said the agreement to set up a joint station was motivated by various underlying issues at the border between both provinces. Eko said the police had lately been receiving frequent complaints from the public regarding security disturbances on the border.

'€œWe agreed to set up a joint security post at the border between North Sumatra and Aceh to overcome security disturbances,'€ Eko told journalists at the North Sumatra Police headquarters on Wednesday.

Eko said at the joint station all personnel on duty in the border area would be disciplined to prevent the misuse of authority.

'€œWe will discipline all the personnel on how to conduct raids and inspections at the border in order to prevent the misuse of authority,'€ said Eko.

'€œThis is a good agreement. Hopefully, with this agreement, grievances from Aceh residents will be reduced,'€ said Husein.

He added that both police forces would enhance the function of the joint post through raids and operations.

'€œThe raids will be focused on curbing drug and firearms trafficking through the border. This is our target,'€ Husein said, adding that security coordination would not only be carried out on land but also at sea.

North Sumatra had been used by drug lords as a gateway to send Acehnese ganja to areas around Indonesia and Malaysia.

In one of the country'€™s largest ganja busts this January, the North Sumatra Police foiled an attempt to transport 4.2 tons of marijuana from Aceh to Medan. The police have also busted a number of ganja trafficking attempts using public buses from Aceh, confiscating dozens of kilograms of contraband in the past month. Drug traffickers transport ganja overland from Aceh to Lampung, crossing the Sunda Strait to distribute it to other islands in Indonesia.

The largest bust occurred in October last year when the police in Riau foiled an attempt to transport 8 tons of marijuana from Aceh to Jakarta.

Acehnese marijuana also spread to neighboring Malaysia. Contraband is transported overland from Aceh to North Sumatra before being transferred to boats headed for Malaysia that are docked at small ports in Belawan, Medan and Tanjungbalai.