Construction of Keraniganj jail yet to start

Prisoners continue to suffer, govt counts extra Tk 324cr

18 May 2010, 18:00 PM

M Abul Kalam Azad

Miseries of the prisoners, who are packed like sardines in Dhaka Central Jail, will prolong due to the home ministry's failure to construct a prison in the city's suburban Keraniganj even in five years. A project to construct an 8,570-capacity modern jail was initiated in 2005 with a target to complete it by 2010. It was taken to ease pressure on the country's most crowded jail that usually accommodates around 9,000 prisoners in a space of only 2,682 inmates. The authorities have already acquired 194 acres of land in 2007 and spent Tk 50 crore to fill 85 percent of the land till April this year, but nobody can say when the construction would start. The long delay in construction of the jail has also added sufferings to the rest 66 prisons of the country as prisoners are regularly being shifted there to reduce immense pressure on the central jail. “Keraniganj jail should have been constructed on an emergency basis as all the jails are now overcrowded with prisoners two to three times bigger than the capacity,” said Dhaka Central Jail Super Tawhidul Islam. The utter miseries of the prisoners multiply during summer, he added. The home ministry along with Prisoner Directorate took the Tk 317-crore “Construction of Keraniganj Central Jail Project”, but the project got in trouble when they started filling low-lying area. The land filling drive remained stalled for months due to writs filed by several land owners with the High Court, demanding due compensation of their land. The court cleared the way for land filling in April last year. Sources involved in the project said it would take them another six months to complete land filling thanks to bureaucratic tangles, legal complications and inefficiency of the concerned in finalising the project. Worst enough, the government has to count extra Tk 324 crore from the public exchequer as the cost of the project has been increased by more than 100 percent due to the delay. As finalisation of the project took long time and legal complications stalled land filling, an evaluation committee headed an additional secretary to home ministry increased the project cost to Tk 641 crore in 2009 due to rise in prices of construction materials. A seven-member committee headed by Director General of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (education and social) Md Mozammel Haque was formed on December 12 last year for evaluation of the revised cost. The committee on February 11 this year decided not to sanction the entire amount at a time and suggested splitting the project into two phases. “The committee suggested approval of the first phase with Tk 343 crore to construct a 4,100-capacity unit for male prisoners and 270-capacity unit for female prisoners,” a home ministry official told The Daily Star on Monday. In the 2nd phase, he said a 200-bed modern hospital, another 4,100-capacity male unit and a training centre will be established on the jail compound with the rest Tk 321 crore. Deputy Secretary to Home Ministry Abdul Haque, who is also the project director of Keraniganj jail project, hoped that the construction would begin next year. He, however, said everything depends on how quickly planning commission approves the project. More than 80,000 prisoners are staying in the country's 67 prisons, which have accommodation for only 27,500 inmates.