The Hon. Rohitha Abeygunawardhana
Rohitha Abeygunawardhana highlighted staffing shortages in the Prisons Department, noting that 37 prisons hold about 30,000 inmates and remandees with 5,218 officers against an estimated cadre need of around 7,000, and referred to planned recruitment. Referring to the incident at the Hulftsdorp Courts complex and past incidents including at Kalutara Prison, he urged attention to the safety of prison officers and staff. He also asked what action would be taken to address prison officers’ pay, which he said is lower than that of police despite comparable duties, and to improve their security.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Minister, according to your answer there are 37 prisons holding about 30,000 inmates and remandees, with 5,218 officers in service. There are many vacancies; by my knowledge the cadre should be around 7,000. Recruitment is needed, and the President has announced new recruitments.
¶ 02 Yesterday’s incident at the Hulftsdorp Courts complex was most unfortunate. You visited the site. We must consider the safety of prison officers and staff. Similar incidents have happened before, including at the Kalutara Prison in my district. Please pay special attention to their safety.
¶ 03 Prison officers’ salaries are lower than those of Police, though their work is comparable. What steps will you take regarding pay and their security?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 20 February 2025 ·No. 1740657427093848 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/16374
Cite as: The Hon. Rohitha Abeygunawardhana. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 20 February 2025. No. 1740657427093848. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/16374