BARBERTON – Mpumalamanga News learnt recently the offenders who are taking ARV’s and serving life sentences are threatening to boycott their medication if today the management at the correctional facility fails to come up with a solution.
Speaking to this publication, one of the offenders, who did not want his identity to be published had this to say “Today we are meeting, we need to know what our future holds. We can’t be here forever. If we don’t get a good feedback, we are not taking our ARV pills so that we can die behind bars and we are not turning back. They must meet our demands since 2012 our parole applications have not been processed and some are delayed.”
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Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the facility, Mr Mesiah Hlongwane confirmed that there is a private meeting underway.
“There is a meeting underway and at this stage, the hunger strike is suspended. The offenders took that decision to go on a hunger strike because they wanted to get attention from the management to address their problems,” said Hlongwane.
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He added that it’s not true that the parole applications of the offenders are not taken seriously.
“It’s a very long process because we need to engage lot of stakeholders before we submit the parole applications to the minister. We can’t jump processes to be followed because they will be sent back and we would have to start everything afresh,” said Hlongwane.
