By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 11 Oct: Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami today approved setting up of a revolving fund for the Jail Development Board in the state and also ordered release of Rs 1 crore as initial amount for the revolving fund. Chairing a meeting in this regard, today, he observed that with the help of this revolving fund, entrepreneurship and self-employment would be encouraged among the prisoners and, at the same time, efforts would be made to ensure the supply of products in the government departments from the state’s jails.
Dhami today chaired a review meeting of the Prisons Department at the Secretariat. On this occasion, he directed the officials to expedite the modernisation of the jails. He directed them to prepare at the earliest an action plan for Video Conferencing Halls and technical development in all the jails of the state to make arrangements for the production of prisoners before the courts through video conferencing.
IG, Prisons, Vimala Gunjyal revealed that CCTV cameras have been fully installed in 3 jails of the state and the work on installation of CCTV in 7 other jails is underway.
As many as 89 body cameras have also been arranged in the jails. Video call facility is now available for prisoners and their families under e-Mulakat. Records of prisoners have been digitised through e-prison. So far, 4868 prisoners have been produced in courts through video conferencing.
Chief Minister Dhami directed that the jails of the state be developed as model jails. Along with improving the condition of the prisoners in jails, entrepreneurship needed to be developed in them through training. They ought to be encouraged towards self-employment. In this direction, work is being done on an action plan to train the prisoners to stitch uniforms for employees in various departments, hospitals and schools of the state government. Efforts would also be made to procure maximum supply of goods for government departments from jails.
Dhami also directed the officials to sign an MoU with AIIMS and arrange a corpus fund for the treatment of prisoners at AIIMS Rishikesh. The Chief Minister said that camps should be set up in jails for making Ayushman cards of all prisoners and their families. The Prisons Department of the state would soon work on an action plan on the lines of Adarsh Jail Lucknow to engage well-behaved prisoners outside the prison for work in salons, ironing clothes, carpentry and electricity works.
The formation of the Uttarakhand Prison Development Board under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister was also discussed at the meeting. Along with this, suitable land allotment was considered for the construction of the headquarters of the prison department in the state. The Chief Minister also agreed to the formation of the Jail Employees’ Welfare Fund on the lines of the Police and Home Guard Departments.
Additional Chief Secretary Radha Raturi, IG Riddhim Agarwal, Additional Secretary, Personnel, Atar Singh along with senior officers of Prisons and Police Departments were present at the meeting.
