KARACHI: Chief Secretary Sindh Dr Muhammad Sohail Rajput and Federal Ombudsman Ejaz Ahmed Qureshi jointly chaired an important meeting at the Sindh Secretariat on Tuesday regarding reforms in the province’s jails

In the meeting, Secretary Law Ali Ahmad Baloch, Nasir Soomro Special Secretary Home, Muhammad Nasir Khan DIG Prison and other relevant officers of the federal and provincial governments participated. Rajput told the Federal Ombudsman that reforms are being brought to prisons on the recommendations of the Federal Ombudsman. “Departments of Education, Health, Social Welfare and Civil Society are working for reforms in the prisons of Sindh,” he said.

He further informed that oversight committees had also been formed and those committees include judiciary, civil society, education and health experts and philanthropists which share their recommendations with the Sindh government to bring.

He further stated that legal aid was also available to prisoners in Sindh, for which the government of Sindh had given Rs825 million and in the year 2022, legal aid had been provided to 1,869 prisoners. The Chief Secretary Sindh further informed that there were problems of overcrowding in the jails of Sindh. Currently, there are 23,000 prisoners in the jails of the province and new jails are being built in Thatta, Shaheed Benazirabad and Malir to solve this overcrowded problem.

The Chief Secretary Sindh said that a high security jail to be built in Thatta where the accused involved in serious crimes would be kept. The Federal Ombudsman’s performance report regarding prison reforms would be presented to the Supreme Court. He said that the Sindh government had done a lot of work on the prison reforms.