10 Sep 2023

Greater and more effective use of ICT in prisons will improve opportunities for education, training, and employment for employees and inmates.

Botswana Prison Service Commissioner, Ms Dinah Marathe said this on recently in Moshupa during the handing over ceremony of educational materials and recreational items by First National Bank Botswana (FNBB) audit team.

Ms Marathe applauded FNBB team for the noble gesture, noting that ICT would also strengthen family ties for the users.

She stated that the donation of 25 computers, classroom equipment, educational materials, refurbishment of the library and recreational items including scrabble, mhele, chess and morabaraba comes at an opportune time when the prison service had amplified its transformational stride towards attaining correctional excellence.

“As a service, we are currently working on strengthening existing rehabilitation programmes as well as introducing new ones in order to keep abreast with current trends,” she said.

The commissioner further explained that the organisation introduced ICT training programmes in November 2021 for young offenders at the Moshupa Boys Prison under the Skills Acquisition Programme, which was in line with the President’s Reset and Reclaim Agenda Priority 3, which talks of digitalisation of processes for enhanced service delivery.

She emphasised that the gesture would therefore assist young offenders to continue accessing quality educational resources during their time in prison.

The skills learnt will help them lead a better life upon release and improve their reintegration back into the society as they will be released into a technologically advanced world, she said.

She also confirmed that since the introduction of the ICT programme, a total of 135 offenders had been trained and the results of the programme were already noticeable as evidenced by the ability of offenders to perform basic computer operations such as typing as well as increased enrolment rate in educational programmes.

“We therefore thank FNBB for this noble gesture, which will inspire us to propagate our ambition of intensifying ICT training and further revitalising our dream to extend the initiative to other classes of offenders,” said the commissioner.

She assured the leadership of FNBB that the donation was a seed implanted on fertile soil as it shall continue to benefit the organisation and bring forth plausible results.

Upon handing over the donation, Ms Myra Sekgororoane from the FNBB Foundation, said the foundation was keen on playing its part in the rehabilitation of the young minds by contributing towards ensuring their mental and academic development for their future, post the correctional facility.

Ms Sekgororoane said refurbishing the boys’ library, donating learning materials, computers and board games would keep the boys’ minds active through continuous learning.

She noted that the FNBB Foundation found it fit to invest more than P74 000 in the initiative since it sought to make a difference in the lives of Batswana in partnership with the community inclusive of the Moshupa Boys Prison.

Ms Sekgororoane also confirmed that the foundation was also investing over P220 451 in an aquaponics systems for the women’s correctional facility in Gaborone. Ends