The warning to prison officers was delivered by the ZPCS
Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu during a graduation ceremony of officers
that took the Conversion, Security, Civic Education, Basic Stores as well as
the Basic Special Weapons and Tactics courses in Ntabazinduna yesterday.
A total of 621 officers, 479 male and 142 female,
graduated, with participants drawn from all the country’s 10 provinces. In his
speech, Comm-Gen Chihobvu said he had been disturbed after a visit to Khami
Prison earlier in the week, where he learnt that officers were also succumbing
to the drug scourge that is bedevilling the country.
President Mnangagwa recently said drug and substance abuse
continues to rob Zimbabwe of the youth dividend that should be at the centre of
the country’s developmental thrust.
“Please desist from taking drugs. The President is on
record speaking about the fact that we need to combat this. Let’s have a
drug-free institution. Let’s go back to our friends and tell them the dangers
of drugs. When I was in Khami this week the doctor told me that there are four
people who are sick because they were taking some of this illicit alcohol. We
have people who are now dying by taking these drugs. So go out there and tell
people about the dangers of partaking in this,” Comm-Gen Chihobvu said.
Of the 621 officers who graduated yesterday, 279 took the
conversion, something that Comm-Gen Chihobvu said the organisation stood in
good stead as their knowhow would help in efforts to standardise the ZPCS’s
operations.
“Among the graduands we have today, a total of 279 officers
underwent the Conversion Course. The course is meant to develop junior and
middle managers for them to become competent leaders who are focused,
dependable, honest, knowledgeable and capable of working under pressure towards
achieving organisational set goals.
More so, the course serves to produce supervisors and
managers who are able to standardise the ZPCS’s operations with the view to
effectively and efficiently utilise the organisation’s resources.
It is also aimed at reaffirming the core responsibilities
and obligations of the organisation towards its constitutional mandate as well
as adding value to middle managers so as to improve their competences as
supervisors and implementers of organisational policies.
It is for this reason that the course package included
modules such as Psychology, Sociology, Entrepreneurship, Corrections,
Counselling, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as well as Prison
Administration and Management,” he said.
With 132 of the graduating officers undergoing Special
Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) training, Comm-Gen Chihobvu said the ZPCS was in a
position to deal with today’s sophisticated criminals. This was the first time
that the ZPCS had successfully run its own SWAT training.
“Worldwide, offenders have become more sophisticated in
outwitting law enforcement officers. However, I am pleased to note that the
ZPCS is not lagging behind in its efforts to thwart such covert operations.
This has seen us training 132 officers in Special Weapons
and Tactics. The course is physically and mentally demanding, and I am advised
that only one student dropped out while all the 21 female students endured till
the end.
The course is aimed at producing officers who are competent
in swift response to prison riots, escorting high security risk inmates,
tracking escapees as well as providing protection to Very Important Persons
(VIPs).
“This is the first time that the ZPCS has managed to
internally run this Training Course after having previously outsourced training
services from other sister security organisations. I am glad that our resource
persons in this field have also provided training services to Eswatini and
currently in Namibia. This should be highly applauded.
We can safely say that as an organisation we are moving in
the right direction that seeks to solve contemporary issues which affect the
implementation of the ZPCS’s constitutional mandate,” he said.
Comm-Gen Chihobvu also said the ZPCS had a key role to play
in the country’s long-term economic future, as the nation could only be
productive if its citizens knew they were safe all the time.
“You may want to realise that the ZPCS has a huge task of
fulfilling the five-year Strategic Plan (2021-2025) whose key result areas
include incarceration and improved welfare of inmates; rehabilitation and
integration of offenders; production through income generating projects and
institutional development which involves Human Capital Management and Policy
Interventions.
Hence, your training has come at the appropriate time when
the country is moving towards achieving the Second Republic’s vision of
“Towards a Prosperous and Empowered Upper Middle-Income Society by 2030.
“To achieve this vision, we are all guided by the National
Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) which outlines the policy and strategic thrust
for the country and the Treasury Budget Framework for the five-year period. In
this vein, the objective of NDS1 is to sustain a positive economic growth
driven by key economic sectors namely agriculture, mining, tourism and
manufacturing. Sunday News
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