The consumption of rice as a staple food may be very common in many homes, but this is not so at the Kumasi Central Prisons where inmates enjoy the staple once in a year, specifically during the Christmas festivities.

For the inmates, their daily bread has been ‘banku and keta schoolboys’ soup.

According to the Deputy Director of Prisons, James B. Mwinyelle, the Ashanti Regional Commander of Pris­ons and Officer in- charge of the Ku­masi Central Prisons, serving inmates rice would require a total of 16 bags of the 50kg rice bags.

Speaking to The Spectator, he said though gari was a good alternative, it remains expensive for the Prisons authority for the large number of the inmates.

“The authorities cannot even afford gari let alone beans to serve as pro­teins, so we rely on ‘Keta school boys’ as a source of protein.”

“Rice is expensive; the authority cannot afford it for this number of inmates we are dealing with. It is rea­son why we may be considering rice for them at Christmas,” he noted.

According to the Regional Com­mander, the increasing number of inmates was a serious concern for the authorities.

Constructed in 1901 and expanded in 1935 to accommodate 500 inmates, the facility now houses 1,627 inmates with 1,214 being convicts and 230 offenders on remand with 82 being on trial.

“Feeding this number of inmates with a feeding grant of Gh¢1.80 per inmate a day to prepare food is a huge burden on the authorities,” he stated.

He said the poor feeding regime was creating a serious health issues for the inmates, two of whom have lost their lives.

The Deputy Director of Prisons fur­ther indicated that the poor feeding coupled with congestion and lack of space for exercise among the inmates needed urgent attention to protect them and thereby reduce the high cost of medical treatment which had become a great burden to the author­ity.

Bathing soap for the inmates, he mentioned, was a big headache for the authority as about Gh¢8,000.00 was needed every month to purchase carbolic soap for each inmate which would not last for two weeks.

He pointed out that it was import­ant for the state to have a second look at the state of affairs of the prisons in the country and come out with urgent measures to address the situation.

He called for a review of the feed­ing grant and consider the Prisons proposal of between Gh¢7.00 and Gh¢10.00 for each inmate per day.

The Regional Commander also mentioned that the Kumasi Central Prisons had taken up serious vegetable farming to help with the feeding of the inmates.

He urged the public to come to the aid of the inmates, saying that the prisons was part of society and must be seen as such in order to avoid a situation where the place would be a harbinger for radicalisation.

The issue of the feeding grant has come at a time the Minister desig­nate for Interior, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, has raised serious concerns about the deplorable state of Ghana’s prisons, particularly regarding the in­adequate budget allocated for feeding inmates.

Speaking during his vetting before the parliamentary appointments com­mittee on Friday January 24, Muntaka pledged to prioritise prison reforms if his nomination was approved.

The Asawase Member of Parliament (MP) lamented that the G¢1.80 daily feeding budget per prisoner, de­scribing it as grossly insufficient and inhumane

 From Kingsley E. Hope, Kumasi