It must be a source of concern to any thinking person that the Prisons Service was unable to respond to the recent jailbreak at the Frederick Street prison.
It is even more amazing that they allow a videotape to be made public which demonstrates their incompetence. There is no apparent embarrassment at their failure to foil a simple plan. They do not even appear to recognise their blunder.
It cannot be possible that in a high-security environment like a prison there was no one manning the camera to bring into action a rapid response unit of prison officers. What then was the purpose of the camera? To review what happened after the fact? Was the camera system not a preventative measure or crisis intervention mechanism?
It is no wonder that the prisons are in the mess that they are. They cannot even set up a simple system of someone manning the monitors to pick up situations which may require urgent action. They cannot blame this on the lack of equipment. Another example of management incompetence.
The resignation of the Commissioner of Prisons should have been on the Minister's desk the day after the fiasco.
Karan Mahabirsingh