Prisons Service to establish more farm camps
FARM camps are to be established at Kokofu and Ejura in the Ashanti Region where prison inmates would be required to live and undertake commercial farming activities.
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The module which is silimar to the former farm brigade system where large tracts of land were cultivated to feed the country and the excess exported for foreign exchange.
The Director General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mrs Matilda Baffour-Awuah, told the Daily Graphic that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had initiated a process to partner the service to expand the prison farm camps across the country.
Challenges
She stated that the service currently lacked the necessary logistics such as operational vehicles, tools and machinery for the training of inmates to effectively engage them on large-scale farming.
The service currently has 15,000 acres of farmlands available of which only 1,000 acres had been cultivated as a result of the logistical constraints.
Mrs Baffour-Awuah said the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr Fifi Kwetey, in a meeting with the Prison Service Council, said the ministry was partnering an Israeli group to establish modern training centres to train the youth in vegetable production using improved technology, and that the prisons would benefit from that initiative.
Project ‘Efiase’
The Chairman of the Prisons Service Council, Rev. Dr Stephen Wengam, in a separate interview, explained that the flagship project of the service known as Project ‘Efiase’ sought to unveil the numerous challenges bedevilling the service, expose its potential and solicit public support to address some of the challenges.
Project ‘Efiase,’ launched on June 26, 2015, is an initiative of the Prisons Service Council to create awareness of prison conditions and raise funds from corporate Ghana, institutions and individuals to improve the conditions, and transform them into reformation centres.
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President John Mahama, as part of measures to improve the prison conditions, promised to deliver two ambulances to enhance the operations of the Ghana Prisons Service and further expressed his preparedness to review the feeding fee of GH¢1.80 per inmate.
Rev. Wengam added that the service had incorporated the expansion of its agricultural production in its agenda to offer modern farming skills to prison inmates, as well as improve their health.
He decried the lack of accommodation for prison officers among other facilities, which does not enable the service to operate efficiently as a correctional institution.
The council chairman served notice that the service was ready to go into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) with investors in many fields of endeavour in order to raise the necessary resources to train prison inmates and equip them with employable skills.
Writer’s email: sebastian.syme4@gmail.com