HIPC funds to improve sanitary conditions of prisons and barracks

Accra, July 24, GNA - Government has provided 635 million cedis from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Fund to change all pan latrines into water closets in prisons and barracks to address the problem of sanitation in the prisons.

There is also a proposal for boreholes to be dug in all prisons to provide a permanent source of water to the prisons to be funded from the HIPC funds.

Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Minister for The Interior said this on Thursday in Parliament when Mr Seth Dankwa Wiafe, NPP-Akwapim South asked what plans the Ministry had to improve the deteriorating conditions in the prisons.

The Minister said the prisons were in deplorable conditions due to long periods of neglect with the buildings in state of disrepair and there is overcrowding.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang said the newest prison, Nsawam Medium Security Prison, built in the early 1960s had not seen any rehabilitation since its construction.

He said additionally all the prisons that should hold about 6,700 inmates had a current population of over 11,600 and the Government was taking a number of steps to address the problem.

The Minister said the first step was the granting of amnesty to more that 2000 inmates as means of decongesting the prisons. He said about 30 per cent of the prison population were on remand.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang said discussions had been initiated with the Attorney General's Department towards speeding up the trial of the remand prisoners some of whose cases had been outstanding for several years.

He said it was the hope that this would also lead to a number of the inmates being released since most of them were in prison for minor offences for, which it was likely they might have already exhausted the sentences they might have been given had been tried earlier.

The Minister said the medium term measures being looked at was the introduction of non-custodial sentences and the review of the country's sentencing policy.

He said the Ministry was also supporting programmes for the construction of prison camps that would house prisoners who have committed minor offences so that the walled prisons would only be reserved for major crimes so as to decongest the walled prisons.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang said the long-term measure relates to the construction of new prisons since a number of prisons were sited on prime areas that were essentially in the centre of towns.

The Ministry was negotiating with developers for the construction of new and modern prisons and barracks in exchange for such lands and it was Government's conviction that these actions would lead to the prisons being in a better state than they were now.