Jails to use info management system from next month

A ‘Prison Information Management System’ will be introduced in all 23 jails of Sindh next month for their better monitoring and administration, said Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah on Tuesday.

The CS and Federal Ombudsman Syed Tahir Shahbaz jointly chaired a meeting at the Sindh Secretariat to review the progress on introducing prison reforms in the province. A statement issued by Farhat Imtiaz Janwiri, the spokesman for the CS, said the meeting was informed that the process of reforms had been started at all the jails in the province.

He said the Sindh government’s departments for education, health and social welfare, as well as the civil society had been engaged for introducing reforms in prisons. The CS informed the meeting that oversight committees had been formed to improve the working of prisons as part of the reform process. He said experts from the fields of judiciary, civil society, education and health had been included in these committees.

The meeting was informed that the process of Covid vaccination had also been launched in prisons, with 4,350 inmates and 1,222 jail staff having been vaccinated against the deadly infectious disease. There are a total of 18,440 prisoners in the province.