Ankaful (C/R) April 17, GNA -A Deputy Director of Prisons (DDP) and Central Regional Commander of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mr Oppong Tweneboa-Kodua, on Thursday called on the government to consider repealing laws that ban the employment of ex-convicts in the public sector. He said this was to enable them to realize their potentials and full benefits of training programmes made available to them during their incarceration.

Mr Tweneboa-Kodua, made the appeal at the inauguration of a pilot project of an "open schooling" in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), for prisoners at the Ankaful Main Prisons, near Cape Coast. Under the project, an 'open university' would be established through the setting up of 'centres' at some selected prisons, to provide inmates as well as other needy and vulnerable students the opportunity to improve upon their literacy and numerical skills, as well as acquire skills in catering, concrete and block-laying. He observed that the tendency to relapse into crime after serving prison terms in the country's prisons was caused mainly by the nation's inability to properly rehabilitate and re-integrate ex-convicts into society.

"If ex-convicts feel rejected by both the society and the laws of the land, there is the likelihood of them trying to get back to prison no matter the training they have acquired", he stressed. Mr Tweneboa-Kodua therefore expressed the hope that the government as well as all social partners, society, the family, churches and all stakeholders will begin to think of how they can help to rehabilitate and re-integrate ex-convicts into lager society, adding, "this is the only way to reclaim the lives of the inmates".

Mr Oppong Tweneboa-Kodua noted that the Services' mandate to provide formal education for inmates had been hindered by inadequate budgetary allocation and the lack of interest in these programmes on the part of its social partners. He, in this regard, commended the government for the initiative, and pledged the Services' support towards making it a success, since it would go a long way in improving the welfare of the inmates, while at the same time, providing the necessary training and counselling towards their reformation and re-integration into the larger society.

Mrs Abena Agyakoma Kwarteng, National Co-ordinator of the Presidential Special Initiative on Distance Learning (PSI-DL), who launched the project, said the inmates would also have the opportunity to sit for the BECE, WASSCE and other examinations to enter the 'open university' that would afford them the opportunity to pursue their future when they were released. She said more than 1,000 students have been targeted, with seven study centres made up of public and private vocational and technical institutions and five prisons nationwide, namely: the Nsawam, Kumasi, Tamale, Wa and Ankaful Prisons. She presented books and other learning materials, a colour television, DVD, and about 600 VCDs that contain over 1,280 hours of lessons from the Junior and senior high schools, and urged the inmates to avail themselves of the opportunity to upgrade themselves.