Kimberly getting new prison

2008-02-19 18:36

Cape Town - The first of South Africa's long-planned "new generation" prisons should be completed in February next year, MPs heard on Tuesday.

The R662m Kimberley Correctional Centre was over a third built at the end of last month, Prisons Commissioner Vernie Petersen told Parliament's correctional services portfolio committee.

Briefing members on the new 3 000 bed prison - eight such prisons have been on government's drawing boards since 2002 - he said a further five would be completed by 2010 or 2011, depending on the speed of construction.

These were at East London, Klerksdorp, Nigel, Paarl and Port Shepstone, and construction would start next year.

Petersen said a feasibility study showed having them built, maintained and run over 25 years by the private sector, in a so-called public-private partnership (PPP), was the best option in terms of "value for money, risk transfer and affordability".

This notion was strongly opposed by committee chairperson Dennis Bloem, who told Petersen: "We want these prisons, but will never agree to a model we do not understand."

He said his committee would meet urgently to decide whether the new prisons were best built and run by the private or public sector, or a combination of the two.

High maintenance

Speaking later to Sapa, Bloem said his objection to the PPP procurement option was based on costs.

There were currently two PPP prisons in South Africa - the 3 000-bed Mangaung Maximum Security Prison near Bloemfontein, in the Free State; and the 3 000-bed Sinthumule Maximum Security Prison near Makhado (Louis Trichardt), in Limpopo.

The two cost government R300m each a year - paid to the contractors - to run and maintain.

This was almost equal to the cost of building the new 30 00-bed Kimberley Prison.

"It's too expensive," Bloem said.

Operational costs at government run prisons were an estimated R191 per offender per day, adjusted down to R152 a day if overcrowding was taken into account.

For a 3 000-bed prison, this would amount to R166.4m a year.

Earlier, Bloem told members the reason for building new prisons was not to relieve overcrowding, but to "address the problem of rehabilitation in our society".

The overcrowding problem could be solved by removing all awaiting-trial prisoners and petty offenders - those serving three or six month sentences - from the country's prisons, Bloem said.

Petersen also told members that two of the planned eight new prisons had been "suspended", pending the outcome of feasibility studies. These were at Leeukop in Gauteng, and at Polokwane in Limpopo.

Financial benefit

His department favoured the public finance model (PFM) of building new prisons, but, in terms of legislation, all procurement methods had to be examined and analysed.

"There was an outcome to that: it told us that the PFM model we prefer is not a viable one, and the value for money, and the best option - the only option that government should follow - is the PPP route," he said.

A Treasury official at the briefing told members there was a 22% to 23% "financial benefit" to PPP prisons compared to government-run facilities.

Petersen said the cost of building a new 3 000-bed prison was about R800m.

- SAPA