Patiala, May 1: State Jail Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa will hold the first meeting of all jail superintendents and senior jail officials on Tuesday. The shortage of manpower, pending funds for jammers, obsolete weapons, poor working conditions and shortage of vehicles will be on the agenda.
Sources confirmed that the 27 jail superintendents, including nine of central jails, seven district jails and 11 of sub-jails, along with the Additional DGP IPS Sahota and other jail officers would attend the first meeting to be chaired by the minister.
A day after assuming office Randhawa had conducted a surprise check in Central Jail Patiala after receiving a call from a jail inmate. Following that, he warned officers of his department to “pull up their socks” and tackle the menace of mobile phones and drugs.
The jail officials will brief the minister on the challenges in tackling gangsters lodged in Punjab prisons and the hardships faced by the jails officials. Jail officials will put up a formal presentation before the minister.
A presentation in this regard, scanned by The Tribune, reveals that the jail top brass would inform the minister about the shortage of staff and how jail officials are managing the jails with approximately 50 per cent staff shortage.
A few years back, of the 24 candidates selected as Assistant Superintendent, only nine joined duty. Five of them left the job later. In 2016, 13 candidates directly recruited as Deputy Superintendent of Jails (DSJ) in Punjab declined to join the department citing “poor working conditions and pitiable infrastructure”.
“The media projects jails in a bad light for many things, but the minister will be briefed about the fact that social media accounts are run and managed from outside the jails while it is projected that it is done by gangsters from inside the jail,” said a top official.
Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com
