The 1,152 prison guards and wardresses who were hired have until Sunday to show up at the Luzira Prisons Academy to get trained.
Frank Baine, the spokesperson for Uganda Prisons Service-UPS, said they gave the recruits five days to report for training. He explained that the five days that started on Wednesday were communicated to the regional prison commanders and recruits via messages to ensure they appeared for training without fail.
Baine says that they won’t accept any explanations from anyone who hasn’t shown up to the commander of the prison academy and training in Luzira by the end of Sunday.
“Everybody should report to the commander prison academy and training not later than Sunday. Anybody who fails to turn inside by that time should forfeit their opportunities. “Please, count yourself off if you don’t show up by Sunday,” Baine said.
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Baine said those in districts like Mubende and Kassanda, where President Museveni imposed a 21-day lockdown as a measure to contain the spread of the Ebola virus, should appear at nearby prison offices and arrangements will be made for them to get to Luzira Academy.
The Uganda Prison Services started looking for new employees in May. From June 13 to 18, interviews were held with the applicants, and on September 12 and 13, medical exams were given to the people who were chosen.
The training should have started already, but there were issues that emerged during the process of conducting interviews and medical examinations. Baine said during recruitment they noticed that over 60 percent had mismatches in their documents.
Baine cited examples of mismatches like ordinary level certificate birth dates not matching with the birth dates on national IDs. In some cases, an applicant’s academic documents would indicate one is 21 years old, but what is on the National ID is different.
The 1,152 recruits have been selected from the more than 2,500 that expressed interest in joining the prison force. These are intended to reduce the workload of the current 12,000 prison personnel, who are five times fewer than the number of inmates they are superintending.
Baine said there are 73,067 inmates across the country’s prison centers. These are in three categories: 36,785 are convicts already serving their jail sentences; 35,918 are on remand; and 364 are debtors. A prison debtor is a person who is unable to pay a debt.
