Barrow promises to build world-class prisons

President Adama Barrow has said he intends to reform the prisons system, and even build new prisons to meet the level of world standard prisons.

He made this pronouncement yesterday during a meeting with the African Union Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AUCHPR).

His government is working on a lot of reforms in all sectors even though it would take time, he said, adding that he wanted the human rights group to visit The Gambia because the country had totally changed, from a dictatorship to a democratic state.

They would also make sure that prisons are visited freely without hindrance, for cells and inmates to be inspected.

People in prisons should be reformed so that if the prisoners are out of the prison they would be useful in the society, not the reverse, the Gambian leader said.

Early this month, the Minister of the Interior, Mai Fatty, visited the prison, and according to him, “the conditions in the prisons are very poor”.

“It is inhuman to keep people for even a day in that horrible place, and the prisons need reform,” the Interior minister declared.