SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Af­ter a mas­sive out­break of the COVID-19 virus at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison late last year, act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan says the prison sys­tem is now COVID-free.

Pul­chan was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the pass­ing out cer­e­mo­ny for 236 re­cruits at the Prison Ser­vice’s Arou­ca com­pound yes­ter­day.

“Let me go on record at this time to say we have no COVID cas­es in the prison ser­vice, none, ab­solute­ly none,” Pul­chan said.

Up un­til No­vem­ber 2020, the Prison Ser­vice had con­firmed over 200 cas­es of the virus with in­fec­tions in both the in­mate pop­u­la­tion and prison of­fi­cers.

But Pul­chan said the of­fi­cers worked along with Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials to im­ple­ment strict poli­cies to keep the in­fec­tion rate at ze­ro.

Dur­ing the screen­ing process at the prison be­fore me­dia per­son­nel could en­ter, of­fi­cers test­ed both our tem­per­a­tures and blood oxy­gen lev­els.

Rrison recruits are seen going through their routine during the Passing Out Parade of Batch #673, Parade Square, Golden Grove Prison, Arouca yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“There was once an oc­ca­sion at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison where we had 77 pris­on­ers with COVID. We locked down that Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, we worked with the Min­istry of Health, had the doc­tors come in to see about the in­mates, to man­age their med­ical is­sues and we were suc­cess­ful in that re­gard.”

He said the train­ing for the new re­cruits was af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic and took one year to com­plete, in­stead of the six-month pe­ri­od it usu­al­ly takes.

He said the new re­cruits will great­ly as­sist in staffing is­sues at the na­tion’s pris­ons.

“It means we can cov­er more ground and the place will be prop­er­ly manned at this point in time.”

He said there are still nu­mer­ous po­si­tions at the top of the Prison Ser­vice hi­er­ar­chy, in­clud­ing the po­si­tion he cur­rent­ly acts in, that need to be filled as well.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons is act­ing and all of his staff are act­ing but aside from that, this batch of of­fi­cers were need­ed to take us to an ac­cept­able lev­el.”

Asked if he was con­cerned about the new of­fi­cers pos­si­bly bring­ing the virus back in­to the prison, Pul­chan said most of the of­fi­cers are very dis­ci­plined.

Minister of National Security Stuart Young presents Gerisha Davis with the best female recruit from the F Squad trophy during the Prison Service Passing Out Parade of Batch #673, Parade Square, Golden Grove Prison, Arouca yesterday.2/16/21

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“There are the ex­cep­tions, of course, those who would want to go to the zess­er par­ties, but the ma­jor­i­ty of of­fi­cers I think they un­der­stand they are front­line staff, they are re­quired here and I have seen a lot of re­straint be­ing demon­strat­ed,” Pul­chan said.