The contracts of 13 Tanzanian prison officers working at the Seychelles main prison facility at Montagne Posee, which end next month, will be extended while others are expected to be recruited.

The extension was one of the subjects discussed by the Commissioner of Prison, Raymond St Ange, and the Commissioner General of Prisons of Tanzania, Mzee Ramadhani Nyamka, who is on a four-day mission in Seychelles.

St Ange told reporters on Wednesday that "the first cohort in 2018 included 23 Tanzanian officers and they were here until 2021. We now have 13 officers and are reviewing our engagement and we plan to recruit new Tanzanian prison officers to balance it out with those recruited locally."

The relationship between the Seychelles Prison Services (SPS) and the Tanzania Prison Services (TPS) started after the signing of a memorandum of understanding on May 1 in 2018.

Now that the TPS has a new Commissioner General of Prisons (CGP), Mzee Ramadhani Nyamka, the two parties discussed further avenues to continue exchanging expertise and review their existing agreement in a bid to improve the prisons in Seychelles.

In addition to the Tanzanian prison officers, TPS will also send two trained nurses to work at the Montagne Posee prison as a stopgap while the local Prison Services review its process of hiring local nurses.

Additionally, the two prison services plan to cooperate in the training of Seychellois officers so that they may look at how other jurisdictions function.

Two Seychellois officers will visit the 123 prisons in Tanzania in a bid to gather experience as to how officers there manage 33,000 inmates.

SPS is also seeking assistance for training in specialised areas such as medical and psycho-social help for inmates with behavioural issues.