Mr. David Y. Issaka presenting the items to the Tamale central prisons
The Center for Social Development Reform (CSD Reform) has donated a list of items to the Tamale Prisons Service Paralegal Department.
The items donated include one Printer, one Photocopier machine, one Laptop computer, one Desktop computer, one File cabinet, and 20 Arc files.
Speaking to the media after the donation, the Executive Director of the CSD Reform, David Y. Issaka said the gesture was necessitated by an evaluation the CSD Reform undertook which revealed that, the paralegal unit of the police service was under-resourced in terms of human capacity and equipment.
According to him, the paralegal unit was an important part of the police service and if they are resourced well, it will aid the inmates to have easy and speedy access to the justice system.
“it is important to resourced the prison service so that they can do effective case tracking and management.”
He hinted that, they intent to bring in a legal officer who will do an assessment of the officers to see their capacity and if the assessment point to the fact that they need training, a lawyer will come and provide them with some form of training.
“Our budget can provide for training for up to about seven staff of the prison service and even if you have just one paralegal officer, you can second some other six persons to join him to go through the training so that they can support inmates to access justice delivery service.”
Mr. Isaaka admitted that, the prison has a lot of needs and that it is their hope that if they are able to gather more funds in the future they will support all the units.
He appealed to the Tamale Central
Prison to put the donated items into good use for the betterment of the prisons.
The Deputy Director of the Tamale central prisons, DOP Samual Sapac Azoogah, who received the items on behalf of the prison service, expressed gratitude to the CSD Reform for supporting the prison service.
“Your donation has come any right time and this will go a long way to uplift the Paralegal Service Department of the Ghana prison service.”
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale