The Interior Ministry is in talks with the Education Ministry to enable the Ghana Prison Service to produce 30 per cent of all school furniture and 30 per cent of all school uniforms.
These furniture and school uniforms will form part of what the Government is giving out freely to schools and school children.
Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, the Minister for the Interior/National Security, said similarly, the Ministry would sign a memorandum of understanding with the Education Ministry, to enable the Ghana Prison Service to procure and produce 20 per cent of sanitary pads for the free sanitary initiative.
“And this we are doing to make sure that our formative programmes within our prisons is changed completely from what we are currently simply doing, I call it warehousing the prisoners, keeping them idle, not too much to do,” he said.
Alhaji Muntaka said this in his Mid-Review Report for the Ministry of the Interior, presented at a press conference at the Presidency in Accra.
The press conference, which was organised by the Presidency Communication Bureau, dubbed “The Governance Accountability Series”, is part of efforts by the Government to deepen transparency and accountability in governance.
The Minister said the Ghana Prison Service had implemented a juvenile and secondary education initiative, supporting education continuity for juveniles and inmates.
The Minister said the Damongo Correctional Facility had been completed, expanding correctional facilities and reducing overcrowding.
“I want to take this opportunity once again to thank the Pentecost Church for the great job that they are doing in supporting the Ghana Prison Service,” Alhaji Muntaka said.
The Minister said he met projects at various stages of completion, five camp prisons, and that the Damongo one, which had just been completed, made it the fifth one.
“And if a church could come to the aid of the Ghana Prison Service this much, I want to take this opportunity to encourage all of us, citizens, individuals, business, corporate organization, to come to the aid of the security services, especially the prisons who have huge challenges in managing the over 14,000 inmates that we have, including foreigners that are in there,” he said.
“As you may be aware, the feeding allocation for inmates is paid at GH₵1.80 less than GH₵2.00, which is woefully inadequate.”
He said the Ministry was focusing on agriculture to improve the feeding of the inmates. The Minister said funding had been secured for the 5,000-layer poultry project, and also cultivated about 1,654 acres of crops.
This initiative, he said, was ably supported by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture through the supply of equipment and inputs.
The Minister said the Ghana Prison Service had also commenced drafting a 24-Hour Economic Proposal, aligning prison operations with national productivity goals.
He said the Service had also launched a digital literacy programme under the One Million Quotas, equipping inmates, officers, and dependents with digital skills.
He said there was an ongoing collaboration with the Youth Employment Agency for prison support staff recruitment to augment the human resources’ need for the service for non-custodial duties.
He said in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Ghana Immigration Service, the Ministry was able to remove and repatriate over 2,241 street beggars from the street to their countries.
The exercise, he said, had restored public order in urban centers while supporting the vulnerable population with humane intervention.
“We are mapping our strategy that will make sure that we eliminate all these challenges on all our streets, not only in Accra but across the cities in our country,” he said.
Furthermore, he said they had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Youth Development for security agencies’ internships, enhancing youth employability while supporting the agencies’ operations.
He said the interns would be deployed across the police, the prisons, and the fire services, declaring that the first batch of these interns would commence training on the 16th of July.
Touching on the Ghana Police Service, the Minister said the Service had established a 24-Hour Economy Secretariat at the Police Headquarters in Accra to provide round-the-clock security for businesses under the government’s flagship programme.
This, he said, was to ensure the safe movement of goods and people, and foster economic growth without fear of attack.
He said the Ghana Police Service had also conducted high-impact intelligence-led anti-robbery operations across all regions and had achieved remarkable breakthroughs in major cases, including the murder of mobile money vendors in Kumasi, Koforidua, and Aflao.
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