Turmoil as Kenyan prison warders strike over pay
NAIROBI (AFP) — Thousands of Kenyan prison warders on Friday went on strike to demand a risk bonus and improved welfare, paralysing nearly all the countries jails, officials said.
Many remand prisoners failed to make court appearances after warders refused to escort them, AFP correspondents and prison officials reported.
Negotiations have been started but police have been deployed to reinforce security in jails, a prisons department spokesman said.
Commissioner of prisons Gilbert Omondi threatened to sack warders who defy his order to return to work.
"Warders are members of the disciplined service. They should be aware of the consequences of their actions when they go on strike," he told a press conference.
"I wish to appeal to my people that they should be patient, we are looking into their grievances," Omondi added.
Omondi however blamed government bureaucracy for the delay in reforming prisons, hit by the first-ever strike since Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963.
The warders are demanding a 5,000-shilling (80 dollars/50 euros) risk allowance that was recently awarded to police, as well as improved living and working conditions.
They complain that their work exposes them to infectious diseases and attacks from hardcore criminals.
Officials said warders were excluded from the police deal because they fall under the home affairs ministry and not the office of the president, which negotiated the police deal.
In addition, they are demanding higher medical and housing allowances. Some said they had not been supplied with official uniforms for eight years.
Television stations said some prisoners had not been fed since the strike started, raising fears of a possible uprising among inmates who live in often squalid conditions.
About 48,000 inmates are squeezed into prisons designed for 15,000, where skin ailments, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are common. Human rights groups have also said torture is rampant.
In 2007, the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said at least two prisoners died every day in one of the country's 89 prisons and three youth correctional centres.
