Prisons dept demands Rs500m for new fans
The Punjab Prisons Department asks for Rs500 million for the replacement of decades-old wiring and ceiling fans.
Interestingly, there is no tradition of the provision of funds for the provision of such basic facilities in Punjab prisons by the government. Authorities said in most of the jails no new fan has been installed in over 40 years. When out of order, the old fans were either repaired to be installed again or fixed after receiving donations from different donors.
The issue has been highlighted and brought into the notice of the Punjab government after a superintendent jail was suspended.
Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar during a visit to a jail in Multan had noticed that a fan was running very slow in a barrack. It had annoyed him. He not only suspended the superintendent of the jail but also asked the authorities to submit him a report. Acting upon his advice, the prison department’s high ups started compiling the data. It showed that there were at least 12,000 fans in 40 Punjab jails that need to be replaced with new ones.
Secondly, the electric wiring of all these jails was also needed to be updated as none of the jail’s wiring had even been updated since these jails were built.
Same was the case with the fans. The department did not install any new fans from the government funds owing to the scarcity of the money.
The management kept repairing the fans whenever they went out of order.
The prisons department in collaboration with the building department had estimated a cost of at least Rs500 million for a new fan.
A summary in this regard has been forwarded to the chief minister.
Jails in Punjab are highly overcrowded. The jail authorities time and again had highlighted the need for construction of new jails. In the past, a few jails were constructed also. This lack of such facilitates further aggravated the poor condition of the inmates in jails.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2020.