KARACHI, Feb 10: A dental clinic, established with the assistance from various non-governmental organizations, was inaugurated in the special prison for Women in the city on Thursday.

Prisons IG Brig Ayaz Mughny, while inaugurating the clinic set up at a cost of around Rs100,000, said that with its establishment, the inmates suffering from dental problems would get immediate medical attention from the doctors available.

On Brig Mughny's request, the sponsors of the clinic - Al-Falah Welfare Trust and Citizens Social Community - also agreed to construct a separate room where the equipment relating to the clinic would be shifted. Till that time, the clinic would operate from its present location in the jail dispensary.

Responding to the journalists' queries, he said that recently 18 new jail vehicles to transport prisoners to courts had been purchased, owing to which the attendance of the prisoners to the courts had increased. He said the construction of new barracks in different jails, had helped solve the problem of overcrowding in the women jails, except in the city's jail.

Citing data, he said that Women Prison in the city had a capacity of 150 inmates, but nearly 239 inmates were residing in it. But the number of inmates in the Hyderabad women jail was 105 against its capacity of 100, and the number of women inmates in Sukkur and Larkana was 22 and 15, respectively, against their capacity of 50 each.

He said that conditions of the women prison in the city was very good and many a facilities, with the support from various non-governmental organizations as well as philanthropists, were being provided to the inmates, however, the situation was not similar in other jails in the province. He urged the philanthropists to come forward and extend assistance to the government so that prisoners living in other jails could also be provided with similar facilities.

He, however, said that the problem of overcrowding in the men's prisons was acute, and said that Karachi Central Prison's capacity was around 1,700 prisoners but at present over 5,500 inmates were living there and almost similar was the case with the Landhi Prison, where against the capacity of 600 inmates, over 3,125 prisoners were living there.