1,152 prison warders and wardresses who were recruited have been given up to Sunday to appear for training at Luzira Prisons Academy.
Frank Baine, the spokesperson for Uganda Prisons Service -UPS, said they gave the recruits five days to report for training. He explained that the five days that started on Wednesday were communicated to the regional prison commanders and recruits via messages to ensure they appeared for training without fail.
According to Baine, they will not entertain excuses from anyone who will not have presented him or herself to the commander prisons academy and training in Luzira by end of Sunday.
“Everybody should report to the commander prisons academy and training not later than Sunday. Anybody who fails to turn within by that time should forfeit their opportunities. Please, count yourself off if you don’t show up by Sunday,” Baine said.
Even those in districts like Mubende and Kassanda where President Museveni imposed a 21 days lockdown as a measure to contain the spread of the Ebola Virus, Baine said they should appear at nearby prison offices and arrangements will be made for them to get to Luzira Academy.
In May, the Uganda Prison Services embarked on a recruitment exercise and conducted interviews for the applicants between June 13 to 18 while medical examinations for the selected applicants were held on September 12 and 13 at the 16 regions.
The training should have started already but there were issues that emerged during the process of conducting interviews and medical examinations. Baine said during recruitment they noticed that over 60 percent had mismatches in their documents.
Baine cited examples of mismatches like Ordinary Level Certificate birth dates not marching with the birth dates on National IDs. In some cases, an applicant’s academic documents would indicate one is 21 years old but what is on the National ID is different.
The 1,152 recruits have been selected from the more than 2,500 that expressed interest in joining the prison force. These are intended to reduce the workload of the current 12000 prison personnel who are five times less than the number of inmates they are superintending.
Baine said there are 73,067 inmates across the country’s prison centers. These are in three categories, 36,785 are convicts already serving their jail sentences, 35,918 are on remand and 364 are debtors. A prison debtor is a person who is unable to pay the debt.
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