How Safe Are Prisoners When Prison Guards Are Dying From COVID-19?
2 March 2021
Spread the love

By James Gwati- There are fears that thousands of prisoners could be silently dying in prison cells from COVID-19 with authorities sweeping the cases under the carpet.

These fears have been raised after this week the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services, said it has lost six of its staff members to Covid-19 since the commencement of national lockdown last year.

Prison officers are safer than inmates who live under squalid conditions in crowded cells.

“Six inmates and two dependents were also not spared as they were among the total 14 deaths we recorded,” said the ZPCS spokesperson, Chief Correctional Officer Meya Khanyezi, this week adding that they recorded 1137 confirmed cases and among them, 403 were officers, 564 inmates and 170 dependents.

These statistics collected from all 46 prisons across the country were released during the voluntary Covid-19 vaccination doses that saw Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu and permanent secretary of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Virginia Mabhiza leading junior and senior officers in being vaccinated in the capital on Monday.