By Nana Osei
Kyeretwie/Christopher Tetteh, GNA
Sunyani, July 16,
GNA – The Justice for All Programme (JFAP) in the Brong-Ahafo Region for 2018
under the auspices of the Ghana Remand Review Task Force has been very
successful.
Justice Clemence J.
Honyenuga, an Appeal Court Judge and the Chair of the Task Force declared on
Friday in Sunyani and therefore commended the local stakeholders for a job well
done.
He was speaking to
the media after the sitting of three High Courts constituted within the
premises of the Sunyani Central Prison to sit over the cases of 76 remand
prisoners who had applied for bail at the Station.
The Task Force
comprise representatives of the Judicial Service, the Office of the
Attorney-General, the Ghana Prison and Police Services, the Commission on Human
Rights and Administrative Justice and the Legal Aid Board.
He said it was
successful because all the stakeholders-the Police Investigators, the team of
Lawyers from the Brong-Ahafo Regional Bar Association led by Mr. Andrew
Tuah-Yeboah, its President, State Attorneys, the Regional Prison Command, the
Justices from the High Court and the Media played their respective roles to
expectation.
Justice Honyenuga
lauded the Police Investigators, State Attorneys and the Regional Commander of
Prison, saying they did their jobs very well and that accounted for the smooth
sitting of the Courts.
He said
statistically out of the 76 applicants, 14 were discharged, one was convicted
and fined, three were convicted and imprisoned, 21 applications for bail were
refused, four were referred for psychiatric treatment, three were absent and 30
granted bail.
Justice Honyenuga
cited that most of the sureties were present to sign the bail bond for the
applicants for the latter to go home immediately and that attested to the
success of the process.
He stated that
unlike other places that the Task Force had visited, the problem had always
been with bail, explaining that some applicants after having been granted bail
still remained in the prison because the Police investigators had not been
cooperating, but the opposite had been the case in the Sunyani sitting.
Justice Honyenuga expressed concern that
recently there had been persistent criticisms of the JFAP, clarifying that “the
JFAP deals with remand prisoners but not convicted prisoners”, hence any individual
or institution that wanted to criticise the programme must be sure of their
facts before coming out to the public domain.
This was because “It
is very demoralising to put in a lot of hard work, then somebody would sit
somewhere only to criticise for the downfall of the programme,” he lamented and
therefore pleaded with those people “who are fond of that to be a bit
circumspect”.
Later in an
interview with the Ghana News Agency, Deputy Superintendent of Prison (DSP)
Stephen Nti, Officer in charge of records at the Sunyani Central Prison,
explained that the Courts under the JFAP had the status of a High Court set up
by the Chief Justice for the speedy trial of remand prisoners whose cases had
delayed in the traditional Courts.
DSP Nti disclosed
that the Sunyani Central Prison had the capacity for 400 inmates but as at the
close of work on Friday, the number stood at 915, excluding 18 females at the
Sunyani Female Prison.
He therefore lauded
the JFAP as “very beneficial to the Prison Service because in prison space is
an essential commodity”.
GNA