Derek Achong

A nine-mem­ber spe­cial prison com­mit­tee, ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ,will meet to­day to start in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the state of the na­tion's pris­ons and ad­dress ma­jor is­sues, in­clud­ing a cur­rent im­passe at Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca.The meet­ing comes on the heels of more than a week of protest by prison of­fi­cers com­plain­ing of health and safe­ty con­di­tions in the coun­try's main prison fa­cil­i­ties.That ac­tion in turn brought protest from pris­on­ers, who com­plained of their treat­ment as a re­sult of the of­fi­cers' ac­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of the com­mit­tee in a press re­lease yes­ter­day.The meet­ing of the com­mit­tee, which is to be chaired by crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran, is ex­pect­ed to take place at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.

The oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers are Prison Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin Mar­tinez, In­spec­tor of Pris­ons Daniel Khan, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ger­ard Gor­don.

The re­lease ini­tial­ly stat­ed that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the prison pop­u­la­tion would sit on the com­mit­tee but a sub­se­quent re­lease late yes­ter­day cor­rect­ed the first and said the pris­on­ers' in­ter­ests would in­stead be rep­re­sent­ed by Khan.The re­lease said: "The Prime Min­is­ter said she had been per­son­al­ly mon­i­tor­ing the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion at the Gold­en Grove state prison and stat­ed that she was deeply con­cerned over re­cent and con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ments re­lat­ed to the prison and to the sit­u­a­tion in gen­er­al."

It al­so stat­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with mem­bers of the POA two months ago to dis­cuss their is­sues which in­clud­ed firearms be­ing pro­vid­ed to off-du­ty of­fi­cers and af­ford­able hous­ing for of­fi­cers."The Prime Min­is­ter has al­so been ad­vised that some of the ur­gent is­sues pre­sent­ed in­clud­ed con­cerns about over­crowd­ing in pris­ons, a lack of avail­able trans­porta­tion to court, no air­ing or recre­ation time for pris­on­ers and the can­cel­la­tion of vis­i­ta­tion rights of fam­i­lies and friends," the re­lease said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she felt the com­mit­tee would bring the is­sue to a speedy res­o­lu­tion.

Of­fi­cers warned of back­lash

The prison of­fi­cers be­gan their "go slow" protest last week, days af­ter their col­league Andy Rogers was shot dead at a con­struc­tion site in Mal­abar on No­vem­ber 7. Last Mon­day, an­oth­er of­fi­cer, Kr­ish­na Mer­hair, of Tu­na­puna Road, Tu­na­puna, was al­so shot near his home. He sur­vived the at­tack.Since the of­fi­cers' protest be­gan, there have been sev­er­al re­ports of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents be­tween pris­on­ers, in­clud­ing one last Fri­day in which eight pris­on­ers were stabbed in a block clash.

There were al­so re­ports yes­ter­day that a group of pris­on­ers at the Gold­en Grove prison had set their cells on fire in protest but this could not be of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed up to last evening.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian by tele­phone yes­ter­day, Mar­tinez said he hoped the ini­tia­tive would be suc­cess­ful in al­le­vi­at­ing the con­cerns raised by his of­fi­cers and the pris­on­ers."We have to try every so­lu­tion. If that will bring some de­sired re­sults to the process I am all for it," Mar­tinez said.

How­ev­er, he plead­ed with the POA to end their protest ac­tion be­fore the prison sys­tem de­scends in­to chaos."If this place de­scends in­to chaos, I am putting that square­ly on the feet of the ex­ec­u­tive of the as­so­ci­a­tion," Mar­tinez said."Any pris­on­er get kill from now on, or any of­fi­cer get kill, the ex­ec­u­tive is to blame for that be­cause they keep on height­en­ing the ten­sion un­nec­es­sar­i­ly," he added.

While he said some protest ac­tion was jus­ti­fi­able in the wake of the vi­o­lent at­tacks on of­fi­cers, he ac­cused the as­so­ci­a­tion of be­ing im­pa­tient."It is a process I have asked them to give us some time to get things go­ing. We are try­ing but Rome was not built in a day, the prob­lem did not come overnight so the so­lu­tions would not be found overnight," he said.Mar­tinez warned the of­fi­cers that if pris­on­ers con­tin­ued to be ne­glect­ed be­cause of the ac­tion, they (the of­fi­cers) would be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.

"If the pris­on­ers are not fed on time, they are de­nied vis­its, or are in any­way dis­ad­van­taged, it would be to the tragedy of the of­fi­cers be­cause they will feel the back­lash," Mar­tinez said.Sev­er­al calls were made to Gor­don's cell­phone and that of as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Ceron Richards last evening but they all went unan­swered.Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Grif­fith said he did not want to com­ment on the work of the com­mit­tee un­til the PM of­fi­cial­ly speaks on the is­sue.

Khan al­so de­clined to com­ment on his ap­point­ment and his role on the com­mit­tee when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.