–Several employees sustain major injuries
By: G Bennie Bravo Johnson I
Employees of the Monrovia Central Prison on early Thursday morning staged a protest preventing inmates from entering and leaving the prison facility in demand of salaries and just benefits and the lack of food and medical supplies.
The situation which later turned chaotic led to two people (male and female) sustaining major injuries.
Calm was restored after a few minutes when the Director of Administration at the Liberia National Police Asatu Reeves arrived at the scene and had talked with authority of the prison facility.
The protesters attributed their actions to recent lack of medical supplies, delay in salary and mainly food shortage and the alleged reluctance of government improve budgetary allotment towards food supply for various PRISONS, especially the Monrovia Central Prison.
It is alleged that it has been a regular pattern at the facility since the inception of the Weah’s Government but it has recently grown from bad to a much more worse case scenario. Even with this terrifying news of the prison lacking food, the government still don’t seem to be moved.
In their words, the Officers believed that their various concerns might still not yield any fruit after so many formal communications means to seek redress, They state that this is why the various Correction Officers NATIONWIDE gathered at the Monrovia Central Prison/South Beach for the protest
The correction officers further provided that their protest was in demand of a certain Prison Budget that was allegedly meant for the Prison Nationwide which was allegedly taken away by Asst. Minister for Corrections Eddie Trawalay.
Minister Eddie Trawalay is currently away from Liberia and could not reach to clarify the allegations against him.
The aggrieved protesters later extended their protest at the Justice Ministry to seek redress from the Justice Minister Frank Musa Dean.
Addressing the media after several hours of negotiations at the Justice Ministry, Moses Carter, the spokesman of the joint security and the Director of prisons facilities in Liberia Sainleseh Keaidah said today’s staged protest was as a result of delay in elections deployment payment.
In their address to the media, they provided that circumstances surrounding the payment for the correction officers are being resolve but did not state how soon they are going to receive their money.
However, they clarified that the protest was not about salary but benefits from the just ended joint security operations of the October 10, and November 14, General and Run-Off elections respectively.
The joint security spoke person added that during the collection of data to inform the payment of the officers benefits, officers were requested to provide mobile money number but instead, orange money number was provided, something he believes is the cause of the delay in the payment.
At the same time, Sainleseh Keaidah has dispelled romour of the prison facility been out of good. He said that the food supply for the month of November is in full and sufficient to run till the end of the month.
However, he acknowledged that at time there are difficulties in attaining the adequate amount of food needed for imates. He called on the incoming government to inprove budgetary allotment for prison food.
