KARACHI, March 11: 'C' Class inmates of the Central Prison of Karachi will have sound-proof cubicles fitted with latest audio facilities for meeting their relatives.

The cubicles will be partitioned with bullet-proof glass to ensure security of the prisoners. The microphone arrangements made in the interview room will enable the visitors to hear the prisoner loudly without any disturbance.

The modern meeting facility for the prisoners will be a major departure from the existing manual system where the prisoners and their relatives cannot hear one another properly despite speaking at a full-throated voice, creating a very noisy scene in the meeting arena.

In the existing system the jail inmates and their relatives made to sit three feet apart with the two iron-netted partitions separating them which do not allow the meeting persons to even see each other’s face clearly.

Inspector-General of Prisons Mohammad Yamin Khan told Dawn on Saturday that to begin with work has started on setting up two model cubicles but there is a plan to build about 50 modern interview rooms to benefit about 6,000 inmates of the Karachi Central Prison. The idea was mooted during a visit to the prisons in Japan. The cost of one cubicle has been estimated at Rs175,000.

Interview with prisoners by their relatives is a major daily activity at the prison where prisoners are given half an hour to meet their kith and kin. The prison staff arranges 250 to 300 meetings of prisoners with their relatives in a day. The average meeting time is 30 minutes.

The IG for prison said four modern prisons would be built at Ghotki, Naushehro Feroze, Mirpurkhas and Thatta. Work on new jails in Ghotki and Naushehro Feroz is 90 per cent complete while land has been allocated to build a new prison at Thatta.

Two new barracks each are being added to the central prison in Karachi and Hyderabad, which will increase the capacity by 250 prisoners each at the two places.