Ghana Prisons Service launches ‘Project Efiase’
A project to revitalise Ghana’s prisons is to be launched today. Dubbed ‘Project Efiase’, it is a 10-year strategic development plan which will serve as a trust fund to reform and rehabilitate all 43 prisons in the country.
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The project, which has been on the drawing board of the Ghana Prisons Service for the past five years, is being undertaken by the Prisons Service Council and will be launched by President John Dramani Mahama.
It will help solicit funds and other support from corporate organisations, benevolent individuals and institutions to revamp the service.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mrs Matilda Baffour Awuah, said the project was aimed at creating awareness on the deplorable conditions of the prisons, adding that the project would solicit support for the rehabilitation and expansion of the prisons.
Why the expansion?
According to the Prisons boss, the expansion had become necessary as the prisons are currently congested.
“What is more worrying is the fact that all categories of prisoners have been put together, a situation which is a recipe for chaos,” the Director-General who was once the United Nations Correctional Advisor to the South Sudan Prison Service said and added that it was internationally unacceptable.
As part of the project, Mrs Awuah said the prisons authority would create enough space so that prisoners could be reclassified to ensure that people on remand were not placed together with hardened criminals.
“As a country being lauded for its rule of law, it is time to do something about the state of our prisons,” she added.
Another major issue that the reform is going to tackle is the huge overhead cost involved in running the prisons.
Mrs Awuah, who is also a former Director of the Prisons Administration and Finance, said: “it is time to make use of the people in the prisons to generate income for their upkeep; the government’s subvention of GH¢1.80 daily per prisoner is not enough.”
Commercialisation
Mrs Awuah, who is a former officer in charge of the now defunct James Fort Female Remand Prison, she said some of the proceeds from the project would be used to retool industries within the prisons so that inmates would be given skills in kente weaving, carpentry, basket weaving, soap making, among other income-generating ventures.
Mrs Awuah, therefore, called for partnerships to set up industries in the prisons and also expand already existing ones.
She said the prisons was also going into commercial agriculture, to help make the prisons self-sustainable.
Citing some examples from international communities, Mrs Awuah said prisoners in Britain were involved in the making of sports wear. She said in South Africa, prisoners were involved in the supply of local furniture for government institutions, a situation which could be replicated in the country if the right measures were put in place.
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Borstal Institute
Another major change, she said, would be at the Borstal Institute where juveniles were being kept.
According to her, the institute needed more attention than it was currently getting and that under international standards, the place should not be run as a prison facility but rather a place where juveniles who found themselves there would be reformed.
Community service
Mrs Awuah, who was also once the officer in charge of the Nsawam Medium Security Female Prison, said the service was linking up with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection so that mothers whose offences were not harsh would be given community service so that they would not be taken away from their children.