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New steel cells for Camp Street prison will be portable – Public Security Minister
The new specially fabricated steel cells, which will be installed at the Camp Street Prison, are to be portable, according to Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan.
The Minister made the disclosure yesterday to the National Assembly during scrutiny of the prison’s budgetary allocation for 2019.
According to Ramjattan, an American company, which has provided the steel cells to prisons in the Caribbean and Latin America will provide Guyana with ‘modular cells’, where they can be packed on each other if authorities decide to do so.
He disclosed that Government has received the design and it is not going to be a complete building.
“It is easily portable too, so if in view of the fact that we now have that and we want to move from Georgetown…these steel cells can be easily moved…so it is not going to be permanently structured there. We decided that there might be some changes in plans in the future of having a prison in the heart of the city,” Ramjattan said.
Previously, Ramjattan had indicated that the cells would be ready by mid-2020 to house some 180 inmates who will be transferred from Lusignan.
Opposition MP, Harry Gill indicated that the current situation at Camp Street Prison is an excellent opportunity to relocate the prison to a place where residents and businesses in Georgetown can feel more secure and safe.
The Camp Street Prison, which was gutted by fire last year.
Ramjattan indicated that is the reason why Government adopted the steel cell modular form that’s portable, because at the present moment, they do not have the space that is as secure as Camp Street to accommodate 240 more prisoners.
“We cannot find that place yet. Plus when you are doing considerations for having a prison, you have to have remand prisoners that will come to court early for their trials. If you put it out too far, you might have a traffic problem, where you can’t arrive at court in time,” Ramjattan stated.
The Minister stated that ‘rest assured, the experts are giving advice as to where we should have a huge modern prison to take care of about 1200 prisoners in Demerara.
Since the Camp Street Prison was destroyed by fire last year, authorities have been scrambling to maintain control of the prison population. Temporary arrangements at Lusignan have proven difficult, with a number of instances of escapes and unrest.
Government faces a daunting task in finding the funds to build a prison and to properly house all the nation’s inmates.
The prison that is being built at Mazaruni, at a cost of some $3B, will only hold about 400 inmates. That cost is expected to escalate given changes made to the design.
That facility is expected to be completed by 2020.
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