Minister officially opens Tzaneen Correctional Centre
Lamola said there are plans for the construction of staff facilities that will house officials working at the centre to ensure that they can do their work with ease.
Ronald Lamola
Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola has officially opened the newly built Correctional Centre in Tzaneen.
The state of the art correctional centre is classified as a medium centre incarcerating offenders serving sentences up to 15 years.
According to Lamola, the centre provides a facility which will be in line with standards and norms of the department of correctional services (DCS) and will enable the department to fulfil its constitutional mandate of safely securing and accommodating inmates.
The old facility housed 68 inmates, while the new facility has the capacity to incarcerate 500 inmates, though they currently have 145 inmates.
An aerial photo of the Tzaneen Correctional Centre taken by Benno Stander recently
“We are being confronted with the need to develop our infrastructure in terns of correctional centres of this nature. This is due to the high level of crime in the country. As long as there is crime in society we will always have the challenge of having to build new correctional centres. What is critically clear is that the construction of new facilities will never outpace the demand for these centres as the pace of conviction is far greater than the pace of building infrastructure,” said Lamola.
He said the Tzaneen Correctional Centre is one of sixteen new generation correctional centres in the country.
Minister of justice and correctional services Ronald Lamola officially opening the Tzaneen Correctional Services flanked by deputy minister of public works Noxolo Kiviet and mayor of Tzaneen Maripe Mangena.
“The Tzaneen centre will transfer these skills to inmates, hopefully they will take advantage of these training opportunities and become better persons upon their release,” he said.
Minister Ronald Lamola.
Programmes offered at the correctional centre include adult education training from level one to four, TVET college programmes, engineering studies from level N1 to N3, skills training programmes, woodwork, electrical, welding, basic computer skills, motor or diesel mechanics, fruit and vegetable production, farm business management and pest control.
He told the mayor of Tzaneen that the inmates are labour that is available at the disposal of the municipality, including the provincial department of public works.
“It is not a violation of human rights for the inmates to go and work in the public,” he said.
He said when these inmates do community work, the public will see them repaying for their offending behaviour. He addressed the issue of overcrowding in South African prisons and said the Tzaneen Correctional Centre has already contributed in the reduction of overcrowding in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West provinces.
Mayor of Greater Tzaneen Municipality Maripe Mangena, MEC for Limpopo department of transport and community safety Mavhungu Lerule-Ramakhanya and the minister of justice and correctional services Ronald Lamola.
“Before the opening of the centre overcrowding in the region stood at 65% and has since been significantly reduced to 13%. “Overcrowding poses a risk to both officials and inmates and has a negative impact on our rehabilitation programmes and also stretches our resources to the brink of collapse,” he said.
The DCS will be opening newly built centres across the country as part of its efforts of reducing overcrowding and enabling effective rehabilitation of inmates.
Deputy minister of ppublic works Noxolo Kiviet, minister of justice and correctional services Ronald Lamola and MEC for Limpopo department of transport and community safety Mavhungu Lerule-Ramakhanya.
This article was republished from Letaba Herald with permission
