Bukavu, 8 May 2014: Justice Provincial Division organized, in partnership with the NGO “Justice and Democracy”/RCN and MONUSCO, a workshop that brought together prisons warders in the South-Kivu province to facilitate exchange of experiences between senior prisons management, to reinforce the mechanisms for prison staff administrative and human resource management and to contribute to improving the work of the senior management of the prisons in the province.

From 7 to 8 May 2014, about twenty prison warders in the South-Kivu province took part in the workshop that facilitated, as indicated by the RCN representative, exchange of experiences on the challenges faced when implementing their mission, on the detention conditions, the frequent prison escapes and the lack of logistics to take prisoners to the venue of the trials etc.

It is in this framework that the head of the provincial Division of the Ministry of Justice had, in her speech, called on prisons warders to watch on their conduct in regard to moral integrity and professional ethics, the regulations, love of work and good management of public business as well as on misconducts in the prisons, especially the articles 4, 5, 6 and 9 of Edict 017-2002 of 3 October 2002, and the code of conduct for public servants.

It is worth recalling that the situational analysis of prisons has shown that prisoners live in inhumane conditions in the South-Kivu. The meeting also helped participants address issues like prisons’ ethics, incidents management in the correction facilities… They formulated recommendations for their work environment and life in the correction facilities to be improved in the South-Kivu.

Participants expressed hope to see prisons rehabilitated, new modern prisons built including warders educational facilities, partition walls, military prisons to transfer inmates and establish a system whereby all prison staff and inmates should wear distinctive uniforms and budget would be allocated for food, sanitation and administrative matters and salaries and incentives would be paid regularly to the correction staff.

MONUSCO/ Biliaminou Alao