Security arrangements, administrative issues and development work required at the 27 jails in the province were reviewed by officials. Sindh Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ayaz Soomro, who is also responsible for prisons, presided over the meeting and Inspector-General Prisons Abdul Majeed Siddiqui, Deputy Inspectors-General Aashiq Memon, Muzaffar Alam Siddiqui and Gulzar Channa, additional deputy inspectors-general and jail superintendents were in attendance.
Prison officials drew Soomro’s attention to crumbling barracks in different jails, a lack of computers in the labs and the need to overhaul and install closed circuit television cameras. “The roof of four barracks would have collapsed if it had rained heavily this monsoon,” the additional inspector-general for Sukkur said at the meeting. He said a summary for Rs10 million has been sent to officials but they are still waiting for the money.
The principal of the Sindh Prison Staff Training Centre in Hyderabad Ashraf Nizamani told the minister that the centre’s hostel, boundary walls, ground and drainage system urgently requires repairs. The construction of the principal’s residence is also incomplete. He submitted a PC-1 (a document required for development projects) of over Rs79million demanding that part of it should be urgently released as a new batch of over 100 policemen will be arriving for training next month.
“The centre doesn’t even have a firing range and we use the police’s range for our trainees,” he said. According to the principal, the centre’s maintenance and repairs budget was stopped in 2008 without any reason. Soomro assured the Principal Nizamani that the funds will be released.
At a press briefing later, Soomro said that the prison department plans to document inmates in jails on the lines of the National Database and Registration Authority. He claimed that the government is also trying to bring salaries of the prison police to the same level as the regular police and that the titles of their posts are also being changed.
The minister also highlighted the promotion of a prison police official, Abdul Majeed Siddiqui, as the inspector-general prisons, claiming that he is the first in Pakistan’s history to come from the same department. “The Pakistan Peoples Party government has created history by elevating an officer from the prison police as the inspector-general police,” Soomro said.
He added that new prisons were being constructed in Sindh. Work on a prison in Karachi has already started while there is a search underway for land in the Kambar-Shahdadkot, Kashmore-Kandhkot and Umerkot districts.
Soomro dismissed security threats to prisons, and instead invited journalists to visit any of the 27 jails in the province at only a 15 to 20 minutes notice. He criticised the courts for the slow trials of the prisoners referencing a recent visit by Sindh High Court’s Justice Sajjad Ali Shah to the Khairpur and Sukkur prisons. Quoting sources, he claimed that the single biggest complaint of prisoners was the slow trial of their cases and that they are languishing in jails without trials or convictions.
Politico speak
Soomro upped the ante against Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday, a day after he declared him a fugitive.
Soomro demanded that the high court take suo motu notice against Sharif for ‘escaping’ from prison, referring to the Sharif family’s departure from Pakistan under an agreement with the government in 2000.
Soomro reiterated that the Sharifs were incarcerated in Landhi Jail after being sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in 2000, and noted that while a record of Nawaz Sharif’s transfer from Landhi to Adiala jail exists but Shahbaz’s does not.
“He should provide the record to the prison police as to how he got released, whether he got a pardon from the dictator [Musharraf] or just skipped.”
Published in The Express Tribune, August 27th, 2012.
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