A man for all prisons! …Poshanand Tahal is a ‘Special Person’

May 12, 2013 News

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“Working at the Georgetown Prison was most challenging…it’s difficult because of the overcrowding and shortage of staff—you’ve got to be on your toes and Ps and Qs at all times. And then there are the technicalities in New Amsterdam… including the mixture of females and males—you have to be well–read and diverse to deal with the two settings…the training methodologies are different.”

 

By Leon Suseran
For Poshanand Tahal, making a difference in the prison system in Guyana started out simply as a fascination with the spotless, ‘shine shoes’ and neatly-dressed officers with attractive uniforms. He said that his allure and dream to become an officer in the Guyana Police Force had nothing to do with his father Charles, himself being a prison officer back in the 1950s, even though the principles he stood for while on the job were due to the inspiration of his father.

Under his lone watch, young Poshanand, in New Amsterdam, oversaw 16-20 prisoners working in the farming section at the prisons, yielding truck full of crops on a weekly basis, a major plus in his career. He was also instrumental in the design and reconstruction of the Timehri Prisons under then Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj.
Our ‘Special Person’, along with a few other senior police officers, helped to draft the Guyana Police Force Strategy which was implemented to better the operations of the force. He has had the unique distinction of heading all the prisons in Guyana, including New Amsterdam, Timehri, Lusignan, Mazaruni and of course, the most challenging one, due to its overcrowded nature, Georgetown Prisons, throughout his 35-year tenure in the Guyana Prison Service.
A significant portion of his earlier days was spent with his mother and father at Mazaruni, where his Dad was stationed. A few transfers later resulted in Poshanand and his mother ending up at Georgetown, during which he attended Campbellville School and later in New Amsterdam at the R.C. School in the town as well as Lochaber School where he wrote his Common Entrance and attended Berbice Educational Institute (BEI).
Due to his father being transferred again, he [Poshanand] was relocated to Bartica to attend school where he was involved in cricket and football. But he ended his high school life at Overwinning Secondary in 1972 after which he wrote his GCE Exams and left home in 1974 to seek employment.
After working for a period at a gas station on the Corentyne, he applied to the Guyana Police Force, Guyana Fire Service, as well as the Guyana Prisons Service, for employment, after which he received a response from the prison service.
On January 20, 1975, his journey in that field began.

“My intention then was to work awhile and get some money. The marketing thing was looking good.” However, he fell in love with the job as a prison officer and did not want to leave.
His first assignment was working as a gate officer at the Timehri Prisons. He stayed there and gained his first experience against the rules, since he was put in charge of working at the front gate only two-and-a-half years in the job (as opposed to one having to be working for over 5 years).
During a period of being off- duty, he met beautiful Kowsilla, in Canje, and they fell in love and got married in 1977. That union bore two children, Dennis, now a Civil Engineer and Michael, an Agriculturist.
Afterwards, he was selected by the Chief Prison Officer to work at the stock farm just adjacent to the Berbice High School.
“I did marvellous things. I remember my first produce was pumpkins and we had to get a canter truck to move it—a lot of pumpkins; eddoes, wonderful boulangers and cassava. You had a number of activities that had to be covered by over 30 prisoners, and you the officer—the single officer—had to control all that activity, but you had to be selective about the prisoners you put [to work]. The law has taught me that every prisoner is a potential escapee.”
Poshanand then enlisted in the Guyana Police Force Cadet Course in 1984 but “for the first three months it was blows—I had gained a lot of weight”. He shed nearly 50 pounds of weight during the process, the effects of which took a toll on him. “When you looked back, it was fun”, he recalled. He graduated in 1985.

In 1990, he was transferred to New Amsterdam and became an Assistant Superintendent after which he was transferred to Mazaruni Prisons.  ”My wife made a terrible sacrifice to hold ends at home in New Amsterdam. She was the one behind me, but I continued and I worked”.
He talked about his numerous transfers (from prison to prison) and many experiences he was a part of, including a day in 1994 while returning to work from Berbice to the Georgetown Prisons. He was due to arrive at the prisons early that morning to unlock the place and prepare it, but was delayed at the New Amsterdam Stelling for hours, during which time there was a prison break. He was summoned to the Director of Prisons’ office after which he was transferred back to New Amsterdam.
The then Director of Prisons, Cecil Kilkenny, entrusted the N/A Prisons to Tahal’s leadership, instructing him to “take over the prison and clean it up”.
“He gave me one month to do so. The prisoners were dissatisfied and he wanted me to put things together again. It looks like I’ve been straightening out prisons all over the place. Anytime the place turns shabby, I’ve got to go and straighten it out”.
Tahal eagerly took up the offer and was extremely happy, too, because he was going to spend Christmas at home with his wife that December. He did put the prisons back in shape and he was later sent back as Officer-in-Charge to Georgetown, then to the Lusignan Prisons and later the Timehri Prisons. He was surprised to see the physical state of the latter building, which was deteriorating.
“I invited Minister Gajraj and I showed him the building… to see the conditions in which the officers were working. The building posed security threats because the wooden boards could have been broken very easily for escapes. The Minister asked me to submit a design which I personally did and later submitted…and I got it passed. I harnessed all the carpenters we had in the system and brought them to Timehri prisons and we worked and tore down section by section and we built. Today’s prison is as a result of my design and I look at it with pride”.

In 1998, Senior Superintendent Tahal gained confidence in his seniors, particularly then Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, who asked him to assist with administrative work three days per week at the Head Office. “I was working between Timehri and Head office and it was a challenging period.”
In 1999, he worked for 6 months but learnt that he would not be appointed Deputy Director. He thought about the reason why and deduced that the appointment system in the force was stagnated and no one was guaranteed an appointed position, “so I drafted a report of the stagnation of the prison. The report went to the Minister and Mr. Erskine was promoted in 1999 and I was appointed Deputy Director in 2000”.
Subsequently an exchange visit programme was started through the Guyana Prison Service and the British Embassy.
“We were looking at training for prison officers at higher levels, [acquiring] lands for farming, and we visited London in 2000 — a team of us including the PS [Permanent Secretary] of Home Affairs, Director of Prisons and two Senior Superintendents—and were exposed to the six types of prisons and the way they operated and we came back and produced a Strategic Plan for Prisons, which included fortification and renaming the prisons in the various categories.” Timehri became a Pre-Release [prison]; Lusignan became an Intermediate; Mazaruni became a hardcore prison; New Amsterdam – a Multi- faceted prison because it had females and males, remands and those convicted, and Georgetown became a semi-maximum prison.
Under the new plan, the seniors also looked carefully at reducing the number of prisoners who took their issues to the rooftops of the prisons.

But it was not all about the prisons. Tahal attended the University of Guyana and read for his Bachelor’s Degree in Public Management in 2006. He had desired to do his Master’s Degree but became ill in 2008 with high sugar and blood pressure levels. This discouraged him to pursue those higher studies “and I couldn’t cope”. He then asked for early retirement, a time during which he started to pay more attention to his health “and deal with the issues I should”. He ended his long and dedicated career with the Guyana Prison Service in January 2010.
Mr. Tahal is quite satisfied with his humble accomplishments to the prison service and also to the wider community in which those prisons exist. He recalled how, through involvement with the Minister of Home Affairs, he acquired a steel hull launch with engine for residents to get in and out of Mazaruni. This served them for over eight years, he stated. He used his office and made contact, too, for the then Guyana Water Authority (GUYWA) to provide a purified water system for residents, since the water in that area was (and in some cases still is) highly unfit for human consumption.
“I was not successful in getting them [the authorities] to consider increasing the power output at Bartica and giving me a submarine cable so Mazaruni could benefit from 24-hour power supply—the area is still operating on a 5-6 hour standby situation.”
At the Georgetown Prison, where the population was outgrowing the space available, Tahal was able to acquire a plot of land and prescriptive rights for 100 square acres of land along the Linden Highway that carries an 80-foot buffer zone around the original land. He asked the then Minister of Home Affairs for $10-12M to mark the land and set up a camp with radio system “that would have given us all the rights to the land”. To date, this plan has not been followed through. He does believe that if the current overcrowding of the Georgetown Prison continues that someday soon, the authorities will have to move some of the population to Timehri.
“Working at the Georgetown Prison was most challenging…

it’s difficult because of the overcrowding and shortage of staff—you’ve got to be on your toes and Ps and Qs at all times. And then there are the technicalities in New Amsterdam… including the mixture of females and males—you have to be well–read and diverse to deal with the two settings…the training methodologies are different.”
Today, Poshanand Tahal is enjoying his time at home, a place he spent many long moments away from. He is also savouring the presence and company of his loving grandchildren.
“I am enjoying grandchildren….they upset this whole house, but I love it,” he said with a smile. “They are the light of my eyes and my life. As for my wonderful wife, she gave up all her time to be with them in the home here, and I’ve been married for the last 35 years plus and it has been a wonderful period. We really enjoy each other. There’s little doubt we were made for each other”.
Truly touching and thoughtful sentiments from Poshanand Tahal, a man for all prisons.

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