Prison inmates graduate 

Source: Prison inmates graduate | The Herald June 10, 2019

Sharon Chikowore Mash West Bureau

Thirteen prisoners recently graduated with certificates in tobacco farming after after completing a one-year course conducted by the Tobacco Research Board and the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service.

The prisoners and four correctional service officers graduated at the ZPCS farm in Banket under a programme that seeks to buttress the service’s rehabilitation agenda. Officiating at the graduation ceremony, ZPCS Deputy Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu said the programme serves as a rehabilitation and empowerment initiative for the officers and prisoners.

“The training programme served as a vehicle for rehabilitating and empowering both inmates and officers with psycho-motor skills for possible employability and self-sustenance,” he said.

“You were endowed with such expertise in tobacco farming as a result of the richly packaged training syllabus which exhausted all the critical areas that encompass the entire tobacco production line.”

He added that the rehabilitation of prisoners through knowledge acquisition in faculties of their choice with assistance of institutions such as TRB helps them to be reintegrated into society as productive and law-abiding citizens. The inmates who graduated were drawn from Harare Central, Karoi, Chinhoyi and Kadoma prisons.