C Max: 'Blood on dept's hands'
2004-11-08 23:19
Sonja Carstens and Christel Raubenheimer
Pretoria - The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union says there is blood on the hands of the department of correctional services after the four deaths in C-Max Prison at the weekend.
Only half of the weekend staff was on duty, claims Popcru secretary Abbey Witbooi, so the department could save on overtime wages.
He was commenting on Monday about the hostage drama at C-Max in which the prison head, a warder and two prisoners died.
"It is a tragedy that warders had to pay with their lives and families now have to cope without breadwinners so that the department's budget will balance."
Manie de Clercq, deputy general manager of the Association of Public Servants (APS), said two of the five watchtowers were unmanned during the drama, because of a staff shortage.
The APS also confirmed that fewer than half of the normal weekend staff were on duty at the time.
Two prisoners overpowered prison chief Sam Gomba and a warder, Benny Ndinisa, on Sunday morning and shot them to death with a firearm that is suspected to have been smuggled in.
'A thwarted escape attempt'
The two prisoners, Ronnie Menyatso and Gift Kganyago, were also shot and killed during the drama.
Meanwhile, Rushana Philander reports that Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour denied on Monday that the C-Max incident was a hostage drama.
During a visit to Malmesbury Prison in the Western Cape, he said the incident was an thwarted escape attempt by one of the prisoners.
According to Balfour, the report on the investigation into the incident will not be made available to the public and media.
The recommendations will be implemented at C-Max at a later stage, however.
This deaths come barely five months after another C Max warder was taken hostage by three prisoners in an escape attempt a mere 40m from where Balfour was addressing warders during a visit.
The department and labour unions are involved in a dispute about the unilateral scaling-down of weekend staff.
Last week, Popcru gave the department a fortnight to re-employ 127 warders after they had been summarily dismissed because they refused to work at weekends because of unsafe conditions.
'Simply not enough warders'
Witbooi said: "Warders are angry. They either die on the job or they go on strike and run the risk of being dismissed.
They prefer going on strike."
According to De Clercq there are simply not enough warders to thoroughly search each and every prisoner.
"It is possible the suspects could have had the gun in the prison for a couple of weeks without the warders' knowledge."
Bheki Manzini, correctional services' director of communications, said he could not comment on rumours that only two of the five watchtowers were manned or that prison staff had been more than halved at the weekend.