THE government has retooled the workshops of five prisons in the country with industrial machines to enable them to undertake income-generation activities and rehabilitation of inmates.
They are the Nsawam Medium Security, Kumasi, Sunyani, Sekondi and Ankaful prisons.
This was disclosed by the Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mr H.O. Korney, at the launch of an entrepreneurial training workshop for prison officers and inmates in Accra yesterday.
He explained that the workshop, which was a collaboration between the Prisons Service and GAG Financial Research Networks, an NGO, would equip the participants with the requisite basic knowledge in investment processes and business management.
Mr Korney said apart from retooling the five workshops, a commercial department and a marketing unit had also been established at the Prisons Headquarters, with units at the various prison yards across the country.
He said as a result, some of the activities of the service had been commercialised, including tailoring, carpentry, agriculture, band and concerts, messes/canteen and catering services.
Others included construction works, ambulance services, water tanker and cesspit emptier services, as well as baking, soap making, shea butter and palm oil extraction, he added.
Mr Korney said by commercialising those activities, the Prisons Service hoped to take full advantage of the Retention of Funds Act, Act 735, which allowed the service to retain 60 per cent of its internally generated revenue.
The Director of GAG Financial Research Networks, Mr John Gatsi, said the prisons abounded with many potential entrepreneurs waiting for their freedom, adding that those were the people GAG would like to assist the prisons to identify and groom into big-time entrepreneurs.
He said the training, which had started as a pilot project, would be extended to cover all the prisons in the country as part of the reformation and rehabilitation of prisons in the country.
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