The Ghana Prisons Service has denied a near rioting incident which was reported to have occurred at the Nsawam Prisons due to the scarcity of water.
The management of the prison said the inmates were scrambling over scarce resources available to them, especially water.
[contextly_sidebar id=”afZ9ZEQ65EK0cxvoWQ7QzXQZdLpgfWTV”]“The little that is in the tank, they have to struggle – everybody at least would want to get a gallon or a bucket and so there are times that when they [prisoners] all gather around the pipe tank to fetch water, one or two people will have misunderstanding and there may be some fights and disagreements among them every now and then. So to say that there was riot over water – That was not the point,” the Eastern Regional Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Prison Services, Courage Atsem explained.
Earlier media reports suggested that some inmates of the Nsawam Medium Security prison rioted over the erratic power supply and water shortage at the facility over the weekend but the service has denied any such incident.
The media reports also indicated that the said riot at the facility left a number of inmates seriously wounded as a result of violent attacks on each other.
But the Eastern Regional Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Prison Services, Courage Atsem explained the situation saying, it is a normal occurrence at the facility because their resources are not enough.
“The fact is that because the inmates far outnumber the resources we have here, there is difficulty,” he said.
He disclosed that every facility at the prison is overstretched especially water because “when the power is off, we are not able to pump enough water into the polytanks and the reservoirs for them to use.”
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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