The Interior Ministry is in talks with the Ministry of Education to enable the Ghana Prison Service to produce 30 per cent of all school furniture and 30 per cent of all school uniforms distributed freely by the government to schools and schoolchildren.
Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, Minister for the Interior and National Security, stated that a similar agreement will be signed to allow the Ghana Prison Service to procure and produce 20 per cent of sanitary pads under the free sanitary pad initiative.
“And this we are doing to ensure that our formative programmes within the prisons are completely transformed from the current state, which I call warehousing prisoners — keeping them idle with not much to do,” he said.
Alhaji Muntaka made these remarks during his Mid-Year Review Report for the Ministry of the Interior, presented at a press conference at the Presidency in Accra.
The press conference, organized by the Presidential Communications Bureau under the “Governance Accountability Series,” is part of efforts to deepen transparency and accountability in governance.
The Minister revealed that the Ghana Prison Service had rolled out a juvenile and secondary education initiative to support education continuity for juveniles and inmates.
He also announced that the Damongo Correctional Facility had been completed, expanding correctional space and helping to reduce overcrowding.
“I want to take this opportunity once again to thank the Church of Pentecost for the great job they are doing in supporting the Ghana Prison Service,” Alhaji Muntaka said.
He noted that five camp prisons were at various stages of completion, and the recently completed Damongo facility made it the fifth.
“If a church can support the Ghana Prison Service this much, I want to encourage all of us — citizens, individuals, businesses, and corporate organizations — to come to the aid of the security services, especially the prisons, which face huge challenges in managing over 14,000 inmates, including foreigners,” he appealed.
“As you may be aware, the feeding allocation for inmates is GH₵1.80, which is woefully inadequate.”
To address this, the Ministry is focusing on agriculture to improve inmate feeding. The Minister said funding had been secured for a 5,000-layer poultry project, in addition to cultivating about 1,654 acres of crops. This initiative is supported by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture through the provision of equipment and inputs.
Alhaji Muntaka further noted that the Ghana Prison Service had begun drafting a 24-Hour Economic Proposal, aimed at aligning prison operations with national productivity goals.
He said the Service had also launched a digital literacy programme under the One Million Quotas Initiative, equipping inmates, officers, and their dependents with digital skills.
Additionally, in collaboration with the Youth Employment Agency, the Ministry had begun recruiting support staff to augment the Ghana Prison Service’s human resource capacity for non-custodial duties.
The Minister stated that, in partnership with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Ghana Immigration Service, the Ministry had removed and repatriated over 2,241 street beggars to their countries of origin.
This exercise, he said, had restored public order in urban centres while providing humane support for vulnerable populations.
“We are mapping a strategy to eliminate all these challenges on our streets, not only in Accra but across cities in the country,” he added.
Furthermore, he announced a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Youth Development to support security agency internships, enhancing youth employability while boosting agency operations.
The interns, he said, would be deployed across the police, prisons, and fire services, with the first batch commencing training on July 16.
Touching on the Ghana Police Service, the Minister said a 24-Hour Economy Secretariat had been established at the Police Headquarters in Accra to provide round-the-clock security for businesses under the government’s flagship programme.
He explained that this was to ensure the safe movement of goods and people and to foster economic growth without fear of attack.
The Ghana Police Service, he added, had also conducted intelligence-led anti-robbery operations across all regions, achieving breakthroughs in major cases, including the murders of mobile money vendors in Kumasi, Koforidua, and Aflao.
Source: GNA
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