10 Jul 2013

Botswana Network on Ethics Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA) and two foreign inmates intend instituting a law suit against the government for failing to provide free anti-retroviral drugs to inmates.

BONELA executive director, Mr Uyapo Ndadi said during a press briefing on Monday that they intended to sue government particularly the Commissioner of Prisons concerning the issue.

He said BONELA received instructions from their two male Zimbabwean clients, noting that instructions were supported by the Commissioner of Prisons who had lamented that Botswana policy excluded foreign inmates from accessing antiretroviral drugs.

He said BONELA intended to be a party to the proceedings because its constitution mandated it to champion the human rights cause of persons living with HIV/AIDS, the marginalised and the weak in society.

Mr Ndadi stated that the prospective litigants were in need of ARV’s, but government authorities were refusing to give the inmates access to their team of private doctors and psychologists to assess them. He said they had been moved from pillar to post by the government authorities saying they sought interventions of the Ministry of Defence Justice and Security.

Mr Ndadi said the case was going to be a ground-breaking matter in that it would give the courts an opportunity to decide on whether the state in denying foreign inmates anti-retroviral drugs was not violating their constitutional right to equality and non-discrimination as well as their common law right to dignity.

He added that the courts would also be given an opportunity to decide on whether the state at common law had no legal duty to provide for care, support and treatment to all inmates under their control. BONELA, he said, was going to advance several arguments that prisoners should enjoy constitutional rights too and their rights could only be limited when there was sound justification to do so.

He explained that freedom of liberty was withheld so that inmates could serve their punishments and be rehabilitated, adding that the right to dignity had to remain impregnable throughout as it was at the heart of human life. Mr Ndadi stated that government had a duty of care and support concerning all inmates, irrespective of their origin.

He noted that they anticipated that government would argue that ARV’s were expensive, saying they intended to counter that argument by indicating that no cost benefit analysis was ever done to leading to that position.

ARV’s, he said costs from as little as P180 per month and it was cheaper to provide ARV’s than to continuously treat inmates for opportunistic infections such as pneumonia, Tuberculosis and even cancer.

Mr Ndadi highlighted that waiting for inmates to contract opportunistic infections was dangerous for public health good because Batswana inmates and prison officials were also exposed. He called for government to release foreign inmates or make arrangements with their countries of origin if it was not willing to spend on them. ENDS