Digital boost for board

By JESSICA TANDA and ILEEN NAKRA
MEMBERS of the Parole Board will now have access to interviews to keep track of prisoners through a digitalised system online, says Department of Justice and Attorney-General (DJAG) secretary Dr Eric Kwa.
Kwa said the Correctional Services would assign a piece of land at Bomana for the department to build the facility.
He emphasised that during the signing of agreement between DJAG and Correctional Services last Wednesday in Port Moresby and said the facility would be a great relief to the parole board.
“Members of the parole board have struggled for the past four years to travel the country to every prison house to hear the applications to give face and meaning to an application,” he said.
Kwa showed his appreciation and was thankful to the Government for allocation of K2.3 million to DJAG to have the job completed by two contractors (Niu Learning Contractors and Heyg International Developer and Contractors) who are working on the building.
“We have now moved into digitalised phase, we are trying to digitalise the criminal process,” he said.
Kwa said the facility would be an Information Communication Technology (ICT) hub where ICT facilities would be installed with zoom and other video conferencing gadgets.
He said if the ICT hub at Bomana proved to be efficient, other facilities would be set up starting at Buimo prison, so the parole officers could have zoom interviews with the prisoners and record them, instead of visiting all prison houses in the country.
Heyg International Developer and Contractors director Florian Wasimbu believes that the facility will be ready in June.