LAHORE: The newly-constructed building of Hafizabad district jail has been declared faulty and ‘apparently unsafe’ for prisoners and other staff concerned.

The building was handed over to the prisons department last year but the issues surfaced during the [recent] inspection carried out by directorate general monitoring & evaluation (DGM&E) of the planning and development department.

The DGM&E released its report in July last month, raising eyebrows of the health authorities, a senior official told Dawn.

He said the scheme was initiated with a sole purpose of constructing a new jail in Hafizabad district because there was no such facility and the locals had to travel to meet their [detained] relatives in jails of other districts.

Project delayed for seven years due to funds shortage

The official said the total area of the newly-built district jail was 59 acre and five kanal and its authorised accommodation was said to be 1,000 prisoners.

The DGM&E in its report also raised [serious] reservations, exposing the “performance” of the home and the communications & works (C&W) departments being the sponsoring department and the executing agency, respectively.

The major area of concern it raised in the report was an inordinate delay in the construction of the project that caused an enormous burden on the national exchequer.

According to the report, (a copy is available with Dawn), the scheme was started on April 16, 2009 with planned gestation period of 24 months.

However, it stood completed on June 30, 2016 with seven-year delay due to primary shortage of funds throughout the gestation period.

“The project was originally approved for Rs560.951 million in November 2007, and later revised twice with the final approved cost of Rs1,385m in October 2016, while the actual expenditure remained Rs1,237.819m,” the report says.

Raising questions on the poor monitoring and follow-ups, it says, the new district jail’s building has developed cracks along with seepage issues in walls, and poor paver work in interview shed, settlement in verandah floor, in indoor games hall as well as in internal pathways.

The department has also reported that the allied buildings including those of post office, government primary school for boys and government primary school for girls were constructed, but they are also non-functional till the project site visit in July (last month).

It further says despite handing the jail over to the prisons department in September 2016, most of its new residences were unutilised.

The residents during inspection also raised issues pertaining to [electric] wiring, the report says.

When contacted Punjab Prisons Inspector General Farooq Nazir said his department had raised issues of similar nature when the building was handed over to it last year.

“As problems pertain to the C&W, it is trying to address the issues. Presently the [district] jail is housing 700 prisoners,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2017