Change of guard at Bomana

Weekender

By THEO YASAUSE
THERE is a new management at the Bomana, the country’s premier prison.
Supt Yelly Oiufa is the new acting commander who took over the reign from Chief Supt Kiddy Keko who has been transferred to head the Correctional Service Training College.
Also as a result of the recent promotions within the PNGCS a number of key persons have also been appointed to take up positions within Bomana Prison.
Given the strategic nature of the prison the number of CS personnel has been maintained at 230 to cater for the ever-increasing prison population which at last count stands at 700 inmates and fluctuates up and down every now and then.
As an organisation, Yelly says he will focus on two central pillars. The first is reshaping the prison industries and second staff welfare especially housing needs as the foundation upon which the whole management structure would be built and effectively work together.
With regards to welfare Supt Yelly says he is mindful of all his officers and is very appreciative of all their contributions. He says success is only achieved with help of everyone.
What’s more, genuine appreciation provides encouragement to develop confidence in all his staff. Yelly says he will employ an open door policy to be fair, honest, impartial, responsive and flexible in his decisions to meet the needs of the organisation and the stakeholders especially the prison inmates and the staff.
He says the successes and failures of the his management depends on the staff that have been placed to work with him as he leads a team of personnel who come together for a two common purpose containment and rehabilitation besides other objectives. For this reason staff welfare will be paramount in order for them to meaningfully facilitate and contributes towards the other organisational goals.
At present staff housing is an issue that has been left unattended over many years. The neglect has led to many associated issues affecting staff morale and performance at the work place. He says staff morale as it is does not permit the optimum use of the technical and human resources available. To address the issue of staff housing he will be tasking one senior officer to look at options of housing including rehabilitation and maintenance of existing accommodation and built new ones in and around the facility.
With regards to prison industry, it is an important area for containment and rehabilitation for inmates to prepare them for their life outside the prison. He says, preparing and giving a second chance to inmates who come in from different social status and background is an important task. Although the inmates are all classified as prisoners, we do recognise that there are some differences in the levels of education and experience in order to help prepare them for the life outside.
He says the first step is to restore the existing infrastructure, machinery and equipment that would be used by the rehabilitation programme and activities. The second step is to retrain and up-skill and multi-skill in-house capacity.
Officers will be going through skills-based training to sharpen their skills in various trade skills before they can teach those skills to the prisoners. Where skills are unavailable internally, we will look at partnership with external stakeholders to move the prison industry forward.
He says the priority trade skills are carpentry, joinery, welding, electrical, and auto mechanic. Also the other focal area would be in agriculture and livestock. The focus will be on garden food production to achieve self-sufficiency. Poultry, piggery and cattle projects will also be rejuvenated to increase production in the coming year.
Whilst two focal areas are critical for the success, the institutions faced faces severe resource constraints in both financial and support services. They would need the support of all stakeholders to make our society safe and secure.
A number of appointments have also been made to head various key sections. Insp Bill Emma is quarter master for Food Rations and Supplies, Insp Yucky Garisson – Welfare, Senior Insp Cletus Yaki – Operations, and Insp Peter Oifa – Security. Sgt Michael Lara heads the Parole Release section, an important office for the prison.
The minimum security unit (MSU)is headed by Chief Insp Demond Gah as new officer in charge and Sgt Major Cyprian Unum is station officer in charge. The aim for the two new officers at MSU is to support the acting commander to speed up the process of rehabilitation using the prison industry and share the vision put forward by the acting commander.
The female wing also sees one change in the station in-charge, Sgt Major Lydia Wai who now has the task of ensuring the smooth management of the female wing issues with officer in-charge Chief Insp Agnes Kunjil.

  • The author is an inmate at Bomana Prison.