Sunyani, July 6, GNA - A 30 million cedi technical workshop donated jointly by Barclays Bank Ghana Limited and the Prisons Ministry of Ghana, a Christian non-profit making organization, to the Sunyani Central Prisons was commissioned at the weekend. The workshop, located inside the main prison yard is aimed at facilitating the training, equipping and empowering of the inmates with employable skills. It has tailoring, electrical, blacksmithing, shoemaking and carpentry sections.

Mr. Richard Kuuire, Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service said the Service would soon adopt a scheme to equip inmates with employable skills that would involve training and production units. The training unit would provide skills to inmates who would thereafter produce quality goods for government organizations, companies and the general public, he said. The Director General added that part of the profits that would accrue from the sale of the products would be reserved and given to the inmates on discharge as seed money to start their own businesses. Mr. Kuuire announced that the Ministry of Interior had endorsed the Service's employable skills scheme, adding that a block-making project at the Ho Central Prisons in the Volta Region would be replicated at the Sunyani Central Prisons for the production of high quality blocks at cheap prices for the construction industry.

The proposed block project at Sunyani would take off next year, he said and expressed the hope that contractors in the region would patronise the products. The Director-General said he expected the Brong-Ahafo Regional Coordinating Council to direct all contractors working on government projects to buy their blocks from the prison project as being done in the Volta Region. He thanked the Barclays Bank and the Prisons Ministry, as well as other companies, organizations and individuals in Sunyani that had contributed to the completion of the project.

Mr. Francis O. Boateng, Brong-Ahafo Regional Coordinating Director acknowledged the contributions of religious organizations such as the Prisons Ministry of Ghana and non-governmental organizations towards the enhancement of the material and general development of not only their members but also Ghanaians in general.

The Prisons Ministry of Ghana had within its short period of existence contributed its quota to national efforts to improve the quality of life of inmates of prisons, Mr Boateng noted. He said the upsurge of social vices in the country had the potential to derail whatever the nation had achieved in the past 43 years as a Republic adding, "the sooner drastic measures are taken to address the trend the better it will be for us as a people." "If Ghanaians fail to do something about the deviant attitudes that send our sons, daughters and relatives to prisons, we may be creating more problems than we can solve as we will have to provide more prison facilities as this," the Regional Co-ordinating Director said.

Mr Boateng called on the courts to give more non-custodial sentences for first offenders, pregnant women or nursing mothers to help reduce congestion in the prisons. Mr. Ambrose Imoro Salifu, Brong-Ahafo Regional Commander of the Prisons Service in a welcoming address announced that the Sunyani Central Prison already had facilities to train female inmates in bakery and appealed to NGOs and individuals to assist the Service to transform and reform the inmates. Nana Kwadwo Nyarko III, Omanhene of Prang and President of the Brong-Ahafo Regional House of Chiefs presided over the function, which was also attended by the Reverend Dr. Kwame Amoah-Kuma, Chairman of Brong-Ahafo Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.