Commissioner of Prisons Percy Chato is today expected to appear before a Kabwe Magistrate court over the poor state of the lavatories at Mukobeko Prison college where over 600 students are sharing the facilities.
According to prison officers sources, Mr Chato has been summoned to court as the head of the Prisons service but it is not clear if the matter would be held in an open court or chambers.
The summoning of Mr Chato follows the move by the Central provincial Health team to obtain an order from the court to institute the closure of the college as a per requirement last week.
But the court has since summoned the commissioner of prison to respond to concerns after which the court would rule whether to grant the order to close the college or not.
Last week sources narrated that the college which trains prison warders was given a notice of closure on December10, 2012 of which the toilets facilities were expected to be improved .
The notice was later extended to a later date but as at last week nothing had been improved forcing the health team to seek court order as per procedure to have the institution be closed.
Warders talked to said the decision taken by the health has been long overdue and that the only way to serve the institute of outbreaks is to have it closed to give the command time to resolve the problem.
“I have been made to believe that training under such the condition with poor sanitation that could be part of the training yet it is not, “one warder talked to.
If students are subjected to such facilitates, one wonders how inmates are treated…says much about my beloved Zed…
There are certain things in life that we take for granted. It is unhealthy for a state institution to run without a toilet or have a single toilet for more than 500 people. I have not seen the situation on the ground but it does not take the head of the Prison Service to construct a toilet. With due respect to issues of contempt of court, my personal opinion is that the local head of that college should have been summoned for failure to use initiative to construct toilets. Asking each student to mold just one muddy brick could have seen a block of toilets constructed at the college. This scenario has nothing to do with the Commissioner of Prisons. The local people running the college have no initiative. It does not even need money to construct mud and brick latrines while waiting for funds
They have started chewing the money. This never used to happen in the previous decades. But ofcourse under PF, low pathetic standards are the new normal.