SOUTH African High Commissioner to Zambia Masala Mziwandila has said that his country is yet to learn from Zambia's successful open-air prison concept that has been on going for a long time.

And Commissioner of prisons Jethro Mumbuwa has revealed that a maximum prison would soon be opened in Mwembeshi to help decongest prisons.

The South African envoy said yesterday when he toured Mwembeshi open air prison that the open-air concept had worked well in Zambia and as such the people of South Africa would learn on how best to implement the concept.

He said it was a good move that the Zambian Government was working hard to rehabilitate the prison, which was abandoned in 1972 so as to turn it into a maximum prison in an effort to decongest the crowded prisons.

He said it was important for the Zambian Government to ensure that the prisons in the country were transformed into habitable places if they were to effectively reform offenders.

And Mr Mumbuwa said the conditions in prisons were bad but Government was working hard to ensure that the situation was addressed adding that the prison being rehabilitated, would help decongest the prisons.

He said at the moment, the Lusaka Central Prison was over crowded, adding that with the coming up of the Maximum prison, the problem of congestion would be addressed.

He also revealed that the South African re-correctional and Zambian prison services had introduced working programmes that would assist the two countries exchange views that would help improve prisons in the two nations.

He said the Prison Service had put up a banana plantation in Mwembeshi in an effort to sustain itself and that the service would replicate such plantations in other prison areas countrywide.