President calls report on ailing prisoners

Chaminda PERERA

The Prisons Reforms Minister has been directed by the President to make recommendations on the elders, children and the sick who are serving jail sentence to secure their release.

Prisons Reforms Minister DEW Gunasekera said that President Rajapaksa gave him specific instruction to make necessary recommendation on them.

The Minister was speaking at a special ceremony held at Temple Trees to mark the Prisoners' Welfare Day.

He added that over 40 percent prisons inmates are drug addicts and the department would separate them from other prisoners soon. He added that separate prisons would be allocated for such drug addicts and doctors would be deployed to attend their medical needs.

A comprehensive program is in the offing for the rehabilitation of these prisoners, he said.

The Minister said he was the first Cabinet Minister who went to Prisons and inquired the problems faced by the officers and the inmates.

He said heavily congested prisons have become a severe problem.

Minister Gunasekera added that a number of commissions appointed by the successive governments since independence made a number of recommendations for the uplift of the condition in prisons.

There are a number of recommendations made by the commission headed by former Supreme Court Judge T M Gratian, he added.

There were a number of reports made by OSM Seneviratene and Ladduwahetty. " Most of the recommendations have not been implemented" , he added.

He said his Ministry will effect an attitudinal change in the prisons sector and the welfare of prisoners' families is also taken into consideration by the Ministry.

A special Home has been set up in Kalutara adjacent to Kaluganga for the woman prisoners who have children below 5 years.

The people failing to pay a fine as small as Rs. 500 are sent to jail and they have to languish there for several days.

The Government has to spend Rs. 260 per prisoner per day. "This situation needs to be changed", he added.

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[No mobile communication in prisons]

The government will soon jam the mobile phones in all prisons islandwide to stop drug smuggling into prisons.

The prison reforms Ministry has arrived at this decision after it noticed sharp increase in drug usage by prison inmates.

According to Prison Reforms Minister DEW Gunasekera, the Ministry in a sudden raid recently found that almost all female inmates were using mobile phones and packets of heroine worth Rs. 50,000 were recovered from them.

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