THE DECISION by Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan and Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, to meet with inmates of the Georgetown Prison following the deadly riot of March 03 was a departure from protocol and should not have happened, former Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee said on Monday.Rohee, speaking as General Secretary of the Opposition PPP, said the intervention of the ministers sent the wrong message to the prisoners. He suggested that any intervention should have been done through the Director of Prisons or the Prison Visiting Committee.

A Prison Visiting Committee is appointed by the minister for each prison, and should meet at their respective prison locations once monthly with the Officer-in-charge, to look into the welfare of the prisoners and ensure any grievances are addressed.

“If they (the ministers) want to negotiate, they should do so through the directorate of the prison: speak to the prison officers, get their views, and work through them or through the visiting committee,” Rohee told reporters during a press conference at the PPP’s Freedom House, Georgetown headquarters.

The situation at the country’s main prison has been somewhat uneasy since the March 3 riot which claimed the lives of 17 inmates in the remand section. A Commission of Inquiry (CoI) is currently ongoing into the riot.

Approximately 13 prison wardens of the Camp Street facility have reported sick for seven days, following allegations of uneasiness.

“One has to be careful (that) when you’re the Minister of Home Affairs, that you don’t send the wrong signal to the prisoners. If you only give the prisoners the impression that you are 100% sympathetic to them, you set up an internal mechanism to negotiate with prisoners, then the prison officers are left out of that…when in fact they are the ones that have custodial responsibility of these prisoners by law,” Rohee said.

“…why do you think this large amount of prison officers are (sic) reporting sick? Because it appears to them that the administration was more sympathetic to the prisoners,” Rohee further claimed.

Security at the prison has been heightened, and Director Carl Graham is adamant that the prisoners are not in control of the prison.

Prison officers from the Timehri and Lusignan prisons were temporarily transferred to support those at the Camp Street penitentiary, coupled with the support of the Joint Services.