Prisons must be clean, well maintained - Thobakgale
The national commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services Makgothi Thobakgale says the country's prisons need to be kept clean and maintained at all times.
Thobakgale appeared before the justice and correctional services committee in Parliament on Friday.
He appeared alongside Minister of Correctional Services and the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure on issues raised during recent oversight visits, including visits to courts.
"We cannot have our correctional services being dirty and our surrounding snot being looked after. we ensure that we check that work on a weekly basis," said Thobakgale.
"Facilities that do not have the equipment we make it a point that we buy. We utilise offenders to do the cleaning. If there is a correctional facility that is not clean the head of centre there and the management is held accountable for that."
Deputy Commissioner Riaan Botha told MPs that the Colesburg Correctional Centre had been renovated to include a pharmacy.
"We need to look at our priorities, there is conflicting or competing priorities in the department on how do you prioritise a fence over a pharmacy. In terms of the pharmacy, it was very easy for us to just renovate an existing facility, we didn't need to do sketch plans approvals and all of that and I think that was the rational of starting with the construction of the facility."
At the same time, he said that a fence is also a priority.
"That allocation is in our documents that was allocated to the facility; however the process has started in conjunction with the Department of Public Works."
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