Africa-Press – Angola. The Cassosso Prison Establishment, in the commune of Kissanga Cungo, municipality of Cela, Cuanza Sul province, began operating Tuesday, with a capacity of 680 inmates.
Located approximately 18 kilometers from the headquarters of Waku Kungo, the penitentiary service has a prison area with five blocks, including a female block, a technical area, an industrial kitchen, a refrigeration unit, a laundry room, a medical center and two cafeterias, a training block with four classrooms, a computer room, administrative block, a residence for the director, attendance block, multipurpose field for practicing various sports, a football field and water treatment system.
The works, which began in 2013, had several interruptions and were carried out by the company China JIANGSU, with a budget of more than two billion kwanzas, financed on the basis of the Integrated Plan for Intervention in Municipalities (PIIM).
After the inauguration, the Minister of the Interior, Eugénio Laborinho, reaffirmed that the infrastructure will accommodate 600 male and 80 female inmates.
“With this we will relieve the pressure on the Sumbe penitentiary establishment, transferring some inmates to this location, in order to reduce the overcrowding that occurs and guarantee better accommodation conditions”, he highlighted.
He made it known that, in the country, prisons will be opened in the coming months in Bomba, in the province of Moxico, Valongo, in Cabinda, Cuquema, in Bié, and Natália, in Huíla.
The Angolan penitentiary system currently controls around 24 thousand inmates, of which 12 thousand are convicted and 11 thousand are preventively detained, spread across 41 penitentiary establishments across the country, a number still insufficient to cope with the current overcrowding estimated at around more than three thousand inmates.
The event was attended by members of the Ministry of the Interior, Penitentiary Services, Civil Protection and Firefighters, representatives of the PGR, Human Rights and Citizenship, the provincial governor of Cuanza Sul, Job Capapinha, from the municipal administration of Cela, among others.
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