Pris­on­ers at Di­vi­sion B on the West Wing of the Gold­en Grove Prison are pass­ing out from hunger af­ter pris­on­ers em­barked on a hunger strike to protest de­plorable con­di­tions.

The protest came weeks af­ter T&T's pe­nal sys­tem came un­der heavy crit­i­cism from the  In­ter-Amer­i­can Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion (IAHCR) at the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton DC.

A source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said the strike be­gan last Mon­day and quick­ly es­ca­lat­ed.

"Pris­on­ers are fed up of the long wait in get­ting their mat­ters heard. Some of them are be­ing de­nied sun­light and the food that is be­ing giv­en to them is worse than dog food," the source added.

Asked to ex­plain fur­ther, the source said, "The fish they feed us has scales and guts. The food not fit for hu­man con­sump­tion. No salt or taste and some­times it is spoilt. The hunger strike is for a bet­ter ju­di­cial sys­tem. Not every­one here is guilty but they are mak­ing crim­i­nals out of in­no­cent peo­ple in this en­vi­ron­ment."

Some in­mates buy salt­ed cheese snacks and mix it in­to their food to get a bet­ter taste.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies pro­fes­sor Rose­marie Belle-An­toine who de­liv­ered a pre­sen­ta­tion be­fore the IAHCR said the pris­on­ers had reached a point of frus­tra­tion.

"I have not heard about the hunger strike but I have been con­tact­ed by a few fe­male pris­on­ers who are in great dis­tress. The pris­on­ers are fac­ing dire con­di­tions and I re­gard the re­mand pris­on­ers as the in­vis­i­ble peo­ple be­cause we know they are there but no­body thinks of what they en­dure on a dai­ly ba­sis," she said.

She not­ed that there were over 2,271 pris­on­ers on re­mand in T&T and out of this 34 per cent, one-third were in­car­cer­at­ed for more than five years.

"12.5 per cent have been on re­mand await­ing tri­al for more than ten. There is a per­son in jail in T&T await­ing tri­al for the past 21 years," she re­vealed.

Belle-An­toine said Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Wil­son has been work­ing to im­prove con­di­tions. She said Wil­son was very con­cerned and had not­ed that in some ways peo­ple on re­mand had worse con­di­tions than the ones in­car­cer­at­ed.

"We are ask­ing for the State to take the lead by solv­ing this mul­ti-faceted prob­lem which in­cludes de­nial of bail for cer­tain in­stances, slow tri­al and an un­der-re­sourced DPP's of­fice as well as law re­form," she said.

Prison Com­mis­sion­er re­sponds

Wil­son, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, said he had a du­ty of care for prison of­fi­cers as well as in­mates.

 He said he heard of the hunger strike on Tues­day and spent half of the day speak­ing with the strik­ers hop­ing to get them to de­sist from em­bark­ing on fur­ther ac­tion.

Wil­son said a record was kept of each pris­on­er who de­clined their di­et. He de­nied that the food at the fa­cil­i­ty was of­ten spoiled and un­fit for con­sump­tion adding that fresh food is cooked dai­ly.

"We try our best to give them a bal­anced di­et and while con­di­tions here are not ide­al, it is true that the food is not flavour­ful be­cause we are cook­ing in bulk for over 1,000 pris­on­ers," he added. Wil­son said there was on­ly a min­i­mum of pro­grammes avail­able to in­mates on re­mand and this is be­cause you can­not cater a pro­gramme for an in­mate who can get bail and go home.

"Re­mand in Gold­en Grove was nev­er struc­tured for pro­grammes but there is a Voc-tech build­ing that we ser­vice in or­der to get some of the re­mand­ed in­mates to do pro­grammes," he said.

He added that a new plan is be­ing drawn up propos­ing that pro­grammes could be in­tro­duced to peo­ple on re­mand and tied in with their sen­tence.

"This will en­cour­age a lot of the re­mand­ed in­mates for drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and as­sist them in be­com­ing bet­ter peo­ple. Pro­grammes are not com­pul­so­ry, it is op­tion­al," he said.

 Wil­son said he in­tend­ed to lob­by for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of all the re­mand­ed in­mates by writ­ing to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty so that the peo­ple on re­mand could have an im­proved life.