Eastern Cape prison without water for three days is becoming health issue
The inmates allege that water is only transported into the prison for the officials to drink and cook in their quarters
More than 1‚200 inmates at the Middledrift prison in the Eastern Cape have been without water for the past three days — with the situation now so bad that some are urinating in the corners of their cells. The prison‚ the oldest in the province‚ was the maximum prison for the Ciskei homeland. Currently run and managed by the Department of Correctional Services‚ it is a prison for male offenders. One of the inmates who contacted TimesLIVE said they were told by the officials that the water pipeline for the prison was last fixed more than 30 years ago. "This is not the first time we are running out of water in this prison; this happened two times last year already. Old pipelines that the department is failing to fix are causing these problems." The inmate charged that the department would only act when this becomes catastrophic, saying, "One of the basic human rights is to have water‚ even if you are an offender‚ government has to provide you with water and food‚ and it is your right. ...
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