Punjab to shift prisoners to their home provinces

All home departments chalk out policy for transferring the prisoners.

LAHORE:

Overcrowded provincial lock-ups have led the Punjab government to go ahead with the decision to shift all the inmates to prisons in their respective home provinces, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The families of the convicts felt they had to travel too long a distance to see their imprisoned relative(s).

The home departments of the four provinces sat down to chalk out a policy for transferring these prisoners to jails in their home districts.

Over 400 prisoners, who were convicted on charges of various crimes throughout Punjab, and were no longer required in any criminal cases, were locked up in various prisons throughout the province, said a prison department official.

After getting the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) home department to verify the credentials of 130 convicts with K-P domiciles, the Punjab home department, in the first phase of the process, gave a go-ahead for shifting these inmates from Punjab to their provincial prisons.

Of these 130 inmates, 55 were imprisoned in the Rawalpindi central jail, 15 in the Lahore central jail, 15 in the Faisalabad central jail, 23 in the Multan central jail, eight in the Sargodha district jail, six in the Attock district jail, four in the Mianwali central jail, one in the Lahore district jail, one in Jhelum and two in the Bahawalpur central jail. All these prisoners will be shifted to the Haripur central jail and the Peshawar central jail.

The Punjab government also sent a list of prisoners who hail from Punjab and are confined in various jails throughout K-P to the K-P government to have them shifted back to the province.

The prisoners will be shifted amid tight security in order to avoid any untoward incidents, said an official. The jail superintendents were directed to make all necessary arrangements for shifting the inmates within a week.

The housing capacity of all 32 jails in the province is just barely above 20,000, whereas almost 60,000 inmates are currently confined in these prisons.



Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2011.