Board working to achieve plan: Pokanis

By MICHELLE AUAMOROMORO
CORRECTIONAL Services Commissioner Stephen Pokanis says the senior executive board will work towards achieving the department’s three-year strategic plan launched last year.
The new board was named yesterday.
It will be concentrating on the strategic plan with focus on setting up technical and vocational education training (Tvet) centres in prisons.
“We have been talking of Tvet centres but we have not formally set up one up in any of our institutions,” Pokanis said.
They have been trying out one at the Kerevat jail in East New Britain.
There is one inside the Baisu jail at Western Highlands but is “not effective”.
The department is discussing with the Don Bosco Technical Institute to set up one at the Barawagi Prison in Chimbu.
The centres will provide technical trade training.
“If we have a technical institution that is purposely to train prisoners to become mechanics, we can have a workshop (garage) in Highlands where we can fix ourselves all vehicles (needing repairs) instead of giving them to outside mechanical workshops,” he said.
“We will cut down the cost of having our vehicles repaired in private mechanical workshops,”
Pokanis said they would set up farming projects that would generate revenue.
“We can keep the prisoners busy (that way).
“They would have a full-time activity to do on a daily basis from which they may earn a little bit of the revenue because that’s what’s in the policy,” he said.