The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Thursday donated two caged trucks to the South Sudan National Prison Service to provide services to inmates.
Speaking during the handover of the trucks in Juba, UNDP Resident Representative in South Sudan, Samuel Doe said the trucks will help in the transportation of inmates from the prisons to the courts for trial.
“This handing over ceremony we have was at your request that you needed some trucks and these trucks will be used to convey the inmates from the prisons to the courts so that they can be able to have the trial necessary and that will contribute to decongestion that will also contribute to the rule of law and will protect their rights as well,” Doe said.
He stressed that they are working with the prison authorities to provide vocational training to inmates so that they can have a decent life after serving their sentences.
“We have been working in providing support for vocational training for some of the inmates, many of the young people who find themselves in prisons have gone through the skills that we provide to the vocational training program have gone back to the community, have integrated well, are contributing to national development and no one who has been trained have committed a crime again,” Doe stressed.
On his part, the Director General of the National Prison Service Henry Kuany Aguar appreciated the donation of the truck but complained that it is not enough to cater to the needs of the prison services across the country.
He called on the UNDP to at least donate one truck per state and the three administrative areas across South Sudan to ease the facilitation of inmates to courts and medical treatment to the hospitals.
Kuany further appreciated the contribution of UNDP in providing vocational training to inmates, renovating prison facilities across the country, and capacity building to prison service officers and services provided to prisons across the country.
He appealed to UNDP to provide more technical support to the prison service as the newly graduated unified forces joining the service will need to be equipped with skills for handling inmates.
“With this support that the prisons service received from the UNDP, we can develop our infrastructure and build the capacity of our staff to some degree but again the service is faced with a new wave of personnel drafted from the Necessary Unified Force who had no background on prisons management,” Kuany said.