Parliament’s Committee on Correctional Services has urged the Department of Correctional Services to ensure that it at least has a clean audit before the end of this (fourth) Parliament. The department is one of a few that have not received a clean audit since the inception of democracy in 1994.
Chairperson of the Committee Mr Vincent Smith said that the Committee wanted to ensure that by the time the fourth Parliament ended the department received an unqualified opinion, but “we have a mountain to climb, ” he said when the department delivered its annual report to the Committee.
Members of the Committee lambasted the department for not reaching its targets. According to the Auditor-General the department reached 47% of its targets and the Committee said this was “worrisome”. The Auditor-General (AG) said one of the reasons the department had not reached planned targets was because it had not considered relevant systems.
The Committee said the department should come up with remedies for the issues raised by the AG. Mr Lennit Max said an unqualified audit opinion should be the norm rather than the exception in all departments. He accused the department of “not taking seriously” recommendations raised by the Committee. “It seems as if you guys think that the exercise by the AG is just an academic exercise,” he said.
Mr Smith said that the department needed urgently to fix its human resources especially the shortage of staff. It was disheartening to learn that some prisoners could not get parole because there were not enough social workers allocated to cases.
According to the department, a gang management strategy was in place to deal with the problem of gangs in prison, to which the Committee replied that this strategy should be presented to it, because gangsterism was seemingly rife in the prisons.
MPs also urged the department to speedily resolve and find ways in which the elderly could be imprisoned. Mr Salamaddi Abram said, “It is important that we have different facilities for the elderly, as vulnerable members of society,” he said.
Prisons urged to 'Clean House'
