Farming seen as answer to inadequate diet in prisons

National

THE Correctional Services will be launching a farming policy to support detainees, says Commissioner Michael Waipo.
Waipo said that with the current issue CS was facing, the Correctional Service was looking into farming prison land to support the detainees.
The National Court has ordered the Bomana jail and the CS generally to serve better, nutritious meals to detainees.
“The policy is now in place and detainees in every institution are willing to work on the land five days a week.
“We have land and labour but we cannot drive this important programme because of no budget to resource our Rehabilitation and Prison Industry Policy.
“All we need is a little capital support to drive the programme.”
Waipo said the CS would continue to support the detainees in good faith until such time the budget was increased so they could serve nutritional meals.
In the meantime, the CS will be putting more effort into farming, planting vegetables and other edible crops that will contribute to improve nutrition for detainees.
“We are interested and willing to work with local and international non-governmental agencies who may be interested to assist detainees with skills and techniques that can be used for large scale farming projects.
“We will be too happy to accommodate them as partners for the good of our detainees’ health, especially by having some quality meals provided to them,” he said.