By ANDREW PHIRI –
ABOUT 1,000 prisoners will this year graduate in various trade skills across the country.
Deputy Commissioner of Prisons in charge of corrections and extensions, Loyd Chilundika, said the service had embarked on a vigorous training exercise for inmates in order to equip them with vocational skills that would help them integrate into society after being discharged from prison.
Speaking in Livingstone on Sunday when he visited homes of former prisoners who were released on parole, Mr Chilundika said the Prisons service had realised that most former inmates had difficulties in
settling after serving their various sentences.
Mr Chilundika, who is national chairperson for the parole board, said it was for this reason that the prison service had gone beyond guarding jailbirds, to empowering prisoners with life skills and offering community service.
“As Prisons service, we have gone beyond the old way of just being guards, our officers are now able to offer skills training to the inmates so that they can be sustainable even as they live prison. We are
also offering counseling and guidance to the prisoners and we also make community follow-ups to those that have been released,” Mr Chilundika said.
He said society must not stigmatise former prisoners, adding that most of former inmates now come out with skills that can be beneficial to the communities they live in.
Mr Chilundika, however, said the service was faced with a challenge of empowering the former prisoners financially but said Government had started the process of helping them out with tools that would help them establish their businesses.
He also advised the ex-prisoners to utilise the skills acquired during their time in prison to sustain themselves and their families and ensure that they live exemplary lives in society that would inspire those that are still serving jail terms.
“I want you to be a model of change. You must also teach those that are inside that prison is not hell but a place for reflection, transformation and reformatory. Let them know that they can learn skills that can benefit them and their families after prison,” Mr Chilundika said.
A former prisoner, who recently completed his three years and two months jail sentence for stock theft Peter Simuyandu, 37, said his time in jail had transformed him and made him a better person.
Simuyandu of Malota said he had learnt brick-laying and psycho-social counseling on HIV/AIDS whilst in prison and was now earning a living out of brick-laying.
Two sisters of Dambwa Site and Service who were also released on parole in August, Precious Moono, 26, and Mwila Mubebe, 32, narrated how they served 24 months after being found in possession of psychotropic substances but were released four months before their term ended.