Staff Writer
The Namibia Correctional Services commissioner-general Rapheal Hamunyela said the incarcerated activists Micheal Amushelelo and Dimbulukeni Nauyoma should not act as the representatives of the prison officers.
Hamunyela said this Sunday in response to a letter Amushelelo and Nauyoma wrote to him regarding the working conditions of the prison officers.
Amushelelo and Nauyoma, who have been in prison since 13 May 2022, say they want to be champions of advocating for a better correctional facility or system with motivated personnel.
While Hamunyela has not seen the letter but was told about it, he said Amushelelo and Nauyoma must not confuse the prison officers, but rather they should focus on their case.
The letter dated 20 June 2022 talks about the low morale among prison officers because of poor salaries and lack of promotion.
The two say that this year alone, about 10 prison officers were dismissed because they were caught smuggling contraband into the facilities.
“Our view is that one correctional officer or personnel dismissed is one too many. At the bottom of it all is the aspect of morale,” they say.
Hamunyela said prison officers are dismissed all the time because of smuggling contraband into the prison; not all officers do so because of low morale or salaries.
According to Hamunyela, officers who smuggle contraband into prison were breaking their work ethics.
He said such officers were endangering the lives of prisoners who, after taking drugs smuggled into the prison, fight and cause harm to each other.
In June this year, Hamunyela said more than 10 correctional services officers, most of them from the Windhoek facility, were dismissed because of smuggling cell phones in exchange for bribes.
Hamunyela admitted that the inmates paid the officers for smuggling mobile phones into the facilities.
But not all officers smuggled the contraband because of money but love after one female officer was dismissed while another resigned after entangling themselves with Fishrot-accused inmates.
Hamunyela told the media that they found the affairs when they stumbled upon text message exchanges between the officers and the suspects.
In May this year, the officer-in-command of the Windhoek Correctional Facility, deputy commissioner Veikko Armas, told the media that they seized 95 mobile phones, 101 packages of dagga, 33 crack cocaine sachets, eight mandrax tablets and 75 sachets of tobacco from inmates.
Armas said they seized some items during external searches conducted around facility perimeters where smugglers plant the drugs.
According to Armas, inmates use mobile phones to commit crimes from the prisons, while weapons are used to perpetuate violence against officers, fellow offenders and members of the public.
The activists say that since their time behind bars, they have noticed that some officers come to work because they have no choice but to feed their families.
Amushelelo and Nauyoma also say that the correctional services cannot transform if young officers leave once they gain some qualifications.
The activists also spoke about a fund into which the prison officers contribute but had not been audited since 2016.
“What is worrisome, if it is true, is that it has become a canteen or piggy bank for senior correctional officers as opposed to serving its intended purpose,” they say.
