Cabinet has approved $53.6 million for upgrade works at the Golden Grove Remand Yard Prison in Arouca, including toilet facilities in the cells.
This was revealed by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon at yesterday’s post-Cabinet media briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.
The upgrade works will also include electrical and mechanical systems upgrade and plumbing.
The facility was constructed since the 1940s and consists of two-storey buildings - the North Wing and the South Wing. It featured 180 cells originally designed to house three inmates each, but because of the current overcrowding situation cells now house between eight to ten inmates. There are approximately 1,000 inmates at the remand yard.
With respect to the pail system still in use at the facility, Dillon said while there are communal showers and wash rooms between both wings and at the outer ends of both wings, “the continued use of the pail system in the cells was of serious safety, health and unsanitary concerns, affecting the inmates as well as prison officers.”
“We will also be looking at upgrading the sewer and waste water treatment, plumbing and fire protection system, also look at the electrical system, ventilation and air-condition system (not for inmates) and the CCTV system,” Dillon said.
The project is said to be a long term one, spanning over the next five years.
Recommendations have also been made to further upgrade works at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) - a cost that has been requested for allocation in the upcoming 2017-2018 Budget. Currently, the roof of the facility is being repaired and the air-conditioning upgraded.
Dillon admitted to challenges for the detainees at the IDC, saying that many of them do not have travel documents because they may have entered T&T illegally and also may have destroyed their respective travel documents.
“It is difficult for some of them to be identified as to what nationality they are,” he said.
Dillon added that there are also repatriation issues where embassies, high commissions and family members also fail to present tickets for those to be sent back to their home countries.
“What happens is that the State now has the responsibility to send them back and some of them are from Nigeria and Ghana. In fact, at an average we repatriate about 100 per month.”