CONSTRUCTION of six living quarters for prison officers will soon commence at the Mazaruni Prison in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region as Government gave its no objection to the $41M contract awarded to N&A Construction for Lot 1 of the project, while $35M was awarded to AAV Ragobeer General Construction for Lot 2 of the project.In March 2016, President David Granger and a ministerial team visited the prison and found the living quarters of the prison officers to be in a deplorable state. Cabinet Secretary and Minister of State, Joseph Harmon at a post cabinet press briefing on Friday said that the two lots will include nine residences and a third lot is being considered.

“But the important thing is to ensure that we create the condition in that facility where the prison officers feel comfortable, they can work in a certain level of comfort and that they don’t have to think about running home every weekend so that we will have a better level of supervision of the inmates at the prison,” Minister Harmon said.

Due to the terrible condition of the living quarters, most prison officers would go home as soon as they are off duty, which proves to be very costly.

“So what we find was that as soon as the prison officers were off of duty, they were finding their way if they live on West Berbice or whatever it is, they’re going home and it cost them about $10,000 every time they have to travel.

“So if you look at the salary of a prison officer and the fact that he needs to go home, we needed to do something to ensure that the conditions under which these officers live and work at the facility is improved,” Harmon reiterated.

The prison houses approximately 289 inmates, 24 of whom are high-profile criminals. On the other hand, the required staff complement is 95, but the facility only has 54 on staff.