Detention facility: ‘High-security prison to be built in K-P’

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister (CM) Pervez Khattak has directed authorities at the prisons department to initiate plans for a high-security jail and a women’s prison in the province.

He also ordered the installation of water-filtration plants at jails across K-P. The CM issued these directives during a briefing of the prisons department at his office on Thursday.

K-P Inspector General Prisons Khalid Abbas updated the CM about the existing conditions of jails in the province, the number of people incarcerated, the facilities provided to the inmates, education imparted, the jail menu, security, and development of the department. Prison records and management systems of jails would be computerised during the current year; something already in place at Central Jail Peshawar.

According to the IG, corporal punishment on inmates was no longer in practice in the province. Prisoners were not just being provided quality food, he said, adding generators had been provided to all jails to ensure uninterrupted power supply.

Advisor to CM on Prisons Malik Qasim, K-P Chief Secretary Arbab Mohammad Shehzan and other officials were present at the briefing.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2013.