Union comes out fighting after deadly PE jail attack
3 St Albans prisoners killed, 5 warders injured
ADIRE shortage of prison warders over the festive season has been blamed by the Police and Prisons’ Rights Union (Popcru) for the deadly fight at Port Elizabeth’s St Albans Prison.
Popcru in the province has now called on the Department of Correctional Services to hire more warders to beef up manpower at prisons across the Eastern Cape.
The call comes after a fatal prison fight broke out at St Albans between inmates and wardens on the Day of Goodwill which left three prisoners dead, 21 others wounded, and five prison guards in hospital with serious head injuries.
It was also revealed that St Albans was being run by gangsters who even enjoyed cellphone communication with gangs outside the jail.
It is suspected that they were planning a mass escape, and that some warders at the prison were on their payroll, enabling weapons and cellphones to be smuggled in.
Popcru provincial chairman, Loyiso Mdingi, yesterday said that the 160 000 inmates countrywide were far too many for the 26 000 guards to manage.
“What happened at St Albans could have been avoided if it was not for the critical shortage of guards,” charged Mdingi.
Mdingi said it was “a numbers game, with inmates taking advantage of a limited number of guards per shift”.
The Popcru leader claimed that the number of guards per shift, had been slashed in half during the festive season, saying this was the case at St Albans on Monday.
Mdingi said attacks on prison guards were on the rise.
The government only hires about 1 000 new recruits every year – with maximum security prisons like Mthatha, Port Elizabeth and East London, which house dangerous offenders, only getting an average of only five additional recruits. “That number is not enough”. St Albans has a staff complement of 305 warders responsible for 1 600 inmates. Only 30 are on duty on any given day.
“In that 30 there are nurses, social workers and teachers who are deemed useless during a prison riot,” he said.
Bhisho legislature’s safety and liaison portfolio committee chairman and ANC MPL Michael Peter, yesterday said he would write to Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha to seek answers as to how knives and other sharp objects entered that prison.
“The committee doesn’t have competency oversight on the running of prisons, but we can elevate our concerns to the national minister.
“All the prisons have 24-hour surveillance, and yet dangerous weapons were confiscated there,” said Peter.
Peter added that it had also come to his committee’s attention that St Albans was allegedly ruled by “gangster inmates who enjoy constant communication with outside world of gangsters”.
“It’s a grave concern that inmates enjoy cellphone communication with gangsters in the Bay’s northern areas.
“In my opinion those prisoners were planning to escape,” said Peter.
Peter also made shocking claims that some prison guards were on the payroll of drug lords and gangsters.
“Those weapons that entered that facility entered the same way as drugs and cellphones entered. This is because we have dishonest prison officials.”
Eastern Cape correctional services boss Nkosinathi Breakfast said the department would release information about the dead prisoners once their relatives had been informed of their deaths.
“Investigations into the incident are continuing,” Breakfast said.