2012 Budget: Ghana increases feeding fees for prison inmates

The Ghana government has increased the daily feeding fees for inmates of the country’s prisons from the current GH¢0.60 to GH¢1.80 per day.

The Minister of the Interior, Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, who announced this in Parliament November 2, 2011, explained that provisions had been made in the 2012 Budget to cater for the increase in the feeding allowance ofthe prison­ers.

The increase followed a proposal the Prison Service through the Prison Council forwarded to Cabinet for the increase of the feeding grant of the inmates.

He was in the House to answer a question posed by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Amenfi Central, Mr George Kofi Arthur, who wanted to know when the feeding grant for prison inmates would be increased from 60pesewas to at least GH¢1.20 to improve on their health.

“The present daily 60pesewas feeding grant, which has been provided for the past 10 years, is unacceptable,” he said, adding that the increase was a modest beginning to improve on nutrition of the prison inmates.

Dr Kunbuor stated that based on the advice of the experts, it was deemed that the GH¢1.80 would be able to provide “decent” three square meals for the inmates.

He explained that following the approval by Cabinet, the proposal was currently receiving positive attention at the Ministry of Finance ­and Economic Planning.

Meanwhile, to effectively manage the inmates’ database, the Ghana Prisons Service was in the process of acquiring 50 multimodal jump kits which would be used to capture inmates’ data, including their biometric fea­tures during admissions to the prisons.

In order to make the national electronic database very effective, all the prison establish­ments would have to be interconnected by wide range network (WAN).

Answering another question posed by Mr Arthur, Dr Kunbuor told the House that currently with the assistance of some donor agencies and the Bureau of National Communication (BNC), establishment of the WAN was underway.

He explained that the first phase which would interconnect the Prisons Headquarters, Nsawam Medium Prison, the Prison Officers Training School, Kumasi and the Ankaful Prisons was expected to be completed by the end of the year.

When it was his turn, the MP for Sunyani East, Mr Kwasi Ameyaw-Cheremeh, asked the minister about measures being taken to ensure the decongestion of prisons in the coun­try.

Answering the question, Mr Kunbuor stated that measures put in place include the institution of the Justice for all programme, the com­pletion of the Ankaful Maximum Security Prison, the conversion of a part of the James Camp Prison in Accra into a remand prison and the establishment of Settlement Camp Prisons.

He explained that the first phase of the Ankaful Maximum Security Prison with intake capacity of 2,000 is completed and ready for inauguration, adding that when that was done, the high risk prisoners from across the Central prisons in the country would be relocated to the maximum security prison.

On the establishment of settlement camp prisons, he said a proposal had been made to make it possible for opening of more settle­ment camp prisons to further reduce the over­crowding in the prisons, explaining that cur­rently 10 of such camps had been provided nationwide.

In another development, Dr Kunbuor told the House that the transfer of staff of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) in the Eastern Region was part of the nationwide exercise aimed at improving the overall efficiency and performance within the organisation. .

He explained that reports indicated that many personnel were often absent from office, attended work late or left office before close of day which breached the Public Service rules and went on unchecked because they were in their own indigenous localities.

Source: Daily Graphic