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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
GOVERNMENT has said there is an urgent need to match the welfare needs of prisoners to international standards as most of them lack clothing and some suffer from malnutrition.
Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi yesterday toured Khami Prison Complex to have an appreciation of challenges affecting the country’s prisons.
Khami Prison Complex houses Khami Maximum Prison, Khami Remand Prison, Mlondolozi Female Prison and Khami Medium Prison.
The Minister held a closed-door meeting with Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services Commissioner General Moses Chihobvu and officers commanding provinces from across the country before visiting some facilities in the prisons.
During the tour, he was informed that Khami Prison Hospital, which is a referral hospital for all prisons in Matabeleland region was facing a myriad of challenges and has shortage of medicines.
A nurse at the hospital said it was painful to watch a prisoner die in instances where they would be needing oxygen.
The hospital is operating without an ambulance and also food containers for prisoners are seriously dilapidated.
Minister Ziyambi was told that most patients admitted to the prison hospital suffer from tuberculosis (TB) while others suffer from malnutrition.
While prisons are involved in farming, they are said to fall short in terms of providing balanced diet mainly on relish.
He was informed that there was no medication for diabetic patients and prison officers have to liaise with relatives of inmates to provide medication for their incarcerated family members.
The hospital lacks basic necessities needed in a hospital and authorities said sometimes they fail to refer patients to public hospitals such as Mpilo Central Hospital and United Bulawayo Hospitals due to unavailability of an ambulance.
Minister Ziyambi told prison authorities to write down all the items they need so that Government can attend to some of them.
In an interview after the tour, the Minister said it was important that, as a policy maker, he understands the situation on the ground.
“It was just a familiarisation visit, sometimes you need, in articulating issues, you need to appreciate what is happening so that you can be able to plan accordingly. I decided to have a meeting with senior officers so that I appreciate their challenges, the living conditions of our inmates so that when we go back, we will be able to discuss and push and prioritise to say we can start by doing one, two, three things to improve the living conditions of our inmates,” said Minister Ziyambi.
“We have an obligation to improve the conditions to a level that is acceptable internationally in terms of our human rights obligations to our inmates and even our officers. So, the visit is basically to have a feel of what is obtaining so that I can discuss with my counterpart the Minister of Finance and Economic Development (Professor Mthuli Ncube) on funding of our institution.”
He said there is an urgent need to improve the quality of life for the prisoners.
“I noticed that there are several challenges, one of the major challenges rather is that we need to ensure that our inmates have blankets, medication. I just had a tour of the hospital and there are challenges of medication, ambulance, the water system and the plumbing system needs to be redone,” he said.
Minister Ziyambi said redoing the plumbing system will avert outbreak of diseases in the hospital.
He was also shown the new quarters for prison officers which are almost complete.
Minister Ziyambi said construction of accommodation facilities for civil servants is a priority for the Second Republic.
The Minister was accompanied by his Permanent Secretary Mrs Virginia Mabhiza. — @nqotshili
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