Senior Correctional Centre appeals for educational support

Assistant Superintendent of Prisons (ASP) James Akolbire, an Assistant Staff Officer at the Senior Correctional Centre for Juvenile Males, has called on the Ghana Education Service to post permanent teachers to the Centre to enhance teaching and learning.

He said most of the teachers who taught the inmates were volunteers, with the majority being prison officers, offering them formal and informal education.

By this, he said, the inmates lacked the requisite knowledge and skills to help transform their lives after leaving the facility.

ASP Akolbire said this when the ‘Yedo Research and Aid (Yedora)’, a not-for-profit organization, visited the Centre to distribute food items including rice, eggs, bottled water and cupcakes to the inmates.

He appealed to the Government to revise the Ghc 1.80 per day allocated for the feeding of each inmate, as it was woefully inadequate to ensure they had balanced diet, and called on the private sector for support.

Other needs, he said, were logistics and teaching and learning materials at their vocational institutions, which became bottlenecks for skills acquisition in various vocations like basketry, auto mechanics, and tailoring.

Explaining the mode of transfer of juveniles to the facility, ASP Akolbire said one could be taken in only by a detention order from the courts and not by the determination of any family.

Ms Matilda Ansah, the Founder and Director of Yedora, said her organisation chose to support the Centre because of its perceived neglect, especially during this COVID-19 period.

She called on other benevolent individuals to support all senior correctional centres across the country to make them achieve their set objectives of positive transformation.

The Senior Correctional Centre was established on May 17, 1947, to transform young males from deviant behaviours and unlawful conducts.

It currently houses about 283 inmates.