With the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er prison shut­down loom­ing, Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day an­nounced plans to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Spe­cial Prison Com­mit­tee.

In a press con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Em­manuel George said some mea­sures had al­ready start­ed, in­clud­ing spend­ing $7.5 mil­lion on bul­let­proof vests and an 80 per cent in­crease in grant­i­ng firearm users' li­cences to prison of­fi­cers in 2014 as com­pared to 2013.

George said, "I think the ma­jor con­cern of prison of­fi­cers re­gard­ing their safe­ty has to do with their re­quest to be giv­en firearms. I have point­ed out re­peat­ed­ly in the past that the is­sue of firearms for prison of­fi­cers or to any­one in this coun­try falls un­der the re­mit of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. He may del­e­gate in part to the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons.

"But be­fore you can get a firearm you have to be is­sued a firearm user li­cence. There has been a con­sid­er­able in­crease in the num­ber of firearm user li­cences be­ing is­sued to prison of­fi­cers in prepa­ra­tion for them be­ing able to be grant­ed the per­mis­sion to car­ry a firearm."

Asked to ex­plain the in­crease, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Con­rad Bar­row said he would not give fig­ures or de­tails for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, said of­fi­cers were al­ready trained in firearm use when they were in­duct­ed in­to the prison ser­vice, and were giv­en reg­u­lar re­fresh­er train­ing.

George al­so an­nounced that prison of­fi­cers whose lives were be­ing threat­ened as a re­sult of their jobs were be­ing re­lo­cat­ed to emer­gency Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) hous­es and were al­so be­ing pro­vid­ed with hous­ing through the HDC's nor­mal al­lo­ca­tion process.

Gov­ern­ment has al­so spent $7.5 mil­lion on 4,000 bul­let­proof vests for the of­fi­cers, which are to be de­liv­ered by Oc­to­ber. He said a spe­cial ten­ders com­mit­tee will al­so soon look at bids from sup­pli­ers of scan­ners and cell phone jam­mers.

Bar­row al­so said 44 beds were added to the south wing of the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca, while the north wing was be­ing out­fit­ted with new beds. He said jail cells were re­ceiv­ing light­ing and plumb­ing up­grades to fa­cil­i­tate new stain­less-steel toi­lets.

Last week, Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ceron Richards warned of an­oth­er prison cri­sis if Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not see that the changes were made im­me­di­ate­ly.

But yes­ter­day George said the as­so­ci­a­tion was part of the com­mit­tee, was aware of progress on the re­port's rec­om­men­da­tions, and it was strange that they would high­light their con­cerns in the me­dia and not to him, as they spoke al­most every week. See page A6 (KF)