BY BLESSED MHLANGA/TATENDA SQUARE/BEAUTY NYUKE GOVERNMENT yesterday announced plans to decongest the country’s overcrowded prisons by pardoning convicted criminals who have served at least a third of their sentences. This was announced by Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa during a post-Cabinet media briefing in Harare. The move follows pressure from civic organisations and human rights groups who raised a red flag over the overcrowding at the country’s prisons which posed a serious health hazard to both inmates and wardens. “The proposed general amnesty is targeted at all prisoners who have served at least one third of their sentences, save for those convicted of specified offences such as murder, treason, rape or any sexual offence, carjacking, robbery, stocktheft and public violence,” Mutsvangwa said. On Sunday, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender released a statement calling on government to decongest the prisons. A top prisons official last week also made a similar call, pleading with President Emmerson Mnangagwa to invoke the Presidential Power (Temporary Measures) Act to release some of the inmates to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. The rights defenders recommended that the elderly, sick and juveniles as well as those who take care of their families, particularly women must be freed to decongest prisons. “In March 2020, the government of Zimbabwe acknowledged the overcrowding in prisons as 22 000 prisoners were held in prison facilities against a total holding capacity of 17 000.  Despite the release of 4 208 prisoners through a Presidential pardon between March and June 2020, prisons are still overcrowded, which makes it difficult to implement social distancing,” the statement read. “In addition to the overcrowding and dilapidated infrastructure, prisons are not adequately supplied with personal protective equipment for the prisoners. “The ablution facilities in the prisons do not have running water and most of them are no longer working.  An observation was made by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum at Chikurubi Maximum (Security) Prison in D Hall wherein inmates were relieving themselves in buckets, which they would empty in the morning when prisoners are let out of their cells.” Follow us on Twitter @NewsDayZimbabwe

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