National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds says that phones are operational in the nation’s prisons.
This follows an Instagram video from General Secretary of the Prisons Officers’ Association Lester Logie who suggested that prisoners’ inability to communicate with their families led to Prison Officer Kendell Smith’s death.
Thirty-six-year-old Smith was shot dead while at Samaroo Village, in Arima on January 11, around 6.20 pm.
Logie insisted because the phones in prison locations for the inmates to speak to their families are not working this was leaving prisoners upset, resulting in threats to the lives of officers.
However Hinds said there is no truth to the accusation.
In fact he told the Power Breakfast Show this morning that the prison service is now engaged in improving the facilities for prisoners to be able to speak via telephones to their relatives and those calls will be monitored.
He noted that those who are interested in using the system for nefarious reasons will not be interested in that provision since they know the calls are being monitored.