No water, so prisoners bathe in sea

The pump, located near water tanks, is supposed to pump water to the cell blocks. While officials wait for a replacement part to be sourced and sent to the island, prison officers have decided to allow prisoners to bathe in the sea, at 6 am and again at 4 pm, daily.

Inmates are given only one litre of drinking water a day and have not been able to wash their clothes or flush toilets because of the water problem.

Relatives of the inmates, who contacted Newsday, said they (the inmates) are fed-up with the situation and that life in prison is miserable enough with the dry taps making life almost unbearable.

President of the Prison Officers Association Ceran Richards confirmed yesterday that a pump has been down and that officers too have been adversely affected.

He said there was a proposal, some years ago, to run a water line from Nelson Island to Carrera to cut costs, but this never happened, for unexplained reasons. He said information being bandied about is that someone is paid close to $30,000 a week to supply water on a barge to the island prison and he wants the authorities to conduct a feasibility study to ascertain if this cost could be cut by running a line direct from Nelson Island.

“We hope the administrators deal with the problem quickly because water is essential for the overall maintenance of people,” Richards said, adding that Carrera is also badly in need of other repairs. Another problem is that prison officers have no waiting area and no facilities to board the boat that takes them to Carrera.

“We have been asking for that for years,” he said, “And nothing has been done to accommodate officers at Hardscot Bay. The association will be aggressively pursuing this going forward.” Richards said the budget for 2016/2017, has a $1.5 million allocation to deal with Carrera’s water problem, but to date, no remedial action has been done.