30 April 2008
Nairobi — It was back to business in most of Kenya's jails Tuesday after the Government gave in to most of the demands made by striking prison warders.
The warders, who had vowed to set free prisoners if their demands were not met, expressed joy when they reported for duty in the morning.
"At least our voices have been heard and some of our demands honoured. We are now back to work," a warder at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison said.
He was speaking outside the High Court in Nairobi where he had escorted prisoners from the penal institution for the hearing of their cases.
Warders at Kodiaga, Kibos, Kericho, Kakamega and Kisii prisons resumed work, but demanded that the risk allowance be backdated to July last year.
Their bosses
They also demanded that charges preferred against their bosses for failing to prevent the strike be withdrawn unconditionally.
In addition, they want the committee appointed by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and headed by his predecessor Moody Awori to look into their grievances disbanded and replaced by a more representative one.
But in Eldoret, work was yet to resume as warders refused to take remand prisoners to court for the second day.
In Nairobi, warders said they were happy with the announcement made by the VP who said they will be receiving a Sh5,000 monthly risk allowance.
Mr Musyoka, who is also the Minister for Home Affairs, further announced that prison officers who took part in quelling the post-election violence would be paid their Sh10,000 stipend.
The warders had staged a five-day protest that crippled business in prisons and paralysed court operations.
Mr Musyoka also promised the prison officers that their living conditions would be improved. He said building of their houses will be hastened.
The housing project, which started in the 2005/2006 financial year, has been moving at snail's pace and prison authorities blame this on contractors.
The Government has been allocating Sh500 million towards the project.
However, the first phase of the project has been completed at cost of Sh228,784,405 in three prisons in Nairobi, including Nairobi West Prison, Lang'ata Women Prison and Nairobi Remand and Allocation Prison.
But it is only at Nairobi West where the 96 new two-bedroom houses have been occupied.
Delays in handing over other units at the other prisons has been blamed on the contractor's failure to connect electricity to the houses.
The Prisons public relations officer, Mr Dixon Mwakazi, says all the 300 houses under the second phase of the project are incomplete. They were allocated Sh572,930,857.
"This is due to the contractor's slow pace," Mr Mwakazi said during a news conference at his office recently.
Warders' houses have remained in a deplorable state for many years and was one of the reasons they downed their tools last week.
Unlike the other two phases, the third phase of the housing project has reached supervisory stage.
Mr Mwakazi explained that they were targeting stations that could use locally available materials to build houses for their staff in this phase.
A total of Sh77,144,400 was allocated for this phase.
Breakdown
A breakdown of the entire project shows that compared to other provinces, Nyanza received the highest allocation of the funds.
It also shows that only 26 penal institutions out of the 93 in the country benefited from the housing scheme.
Nyanza received Sh105,281,951, Central Sh104,916,560 and Eastern was given Sh103,407,185.
Rift Valley came fourth after receiving Sh102,385,587.50, Western Sh92,813,855 and Coast Sh85 million.
Nairobi received Sh52,666,993 while North Eastern got Sh28,844,313.
Additional reporting by Walter Menya, Sollo Kiragu, Benson Amadala and Elisha Otieno
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