By Staff Reporter
The Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services is concerned about the high levels of overcrowding and delays in maintenance in Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town.
It conducted an oversight visit of the facility and found that the remand detainees’ facility was 234% overcrowded, Medium A- section 146%, Medium B-Section 149%, Medium C-Section 61% and the women’s section 248%.
Committee chairperson Kgomotso Anthea Ramolobeng led a walkabout with committee members and prison officials to the centre’s clinic, baby-mother-housing unit, the section for juvenile remand detainees, the female section, the male section and the workshops for woodwork, steelwork, and textiles.
At the detainee facility for juveniles, Ramolobeng encouraged them to change as life inside correctional centres was uncomfortable and inconvenient.
“When you are arrested you jettison your home comfortability and some rights and endure a direct opposite of that behind the prison doors. You may enjoy your limited human rights, but in an unfavourable correctional centre environment,” she said.
On the lack of maintenance of infrastructure, committee members saw some dilapidated parts of the facility, damaged water infrastructure, kitchen equipment that was not working and that the bed space at the remand centre needed urgent attention.
Ramlobeng said the committee resolved to have a joint meeting with the Portfolio Committee on Public Works and Infrastructure on maintenance as it was an idssue at every facility they had visited.
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