The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) has raised an alarm over what it de­scribes as poor co­or­di­na­tion, in­ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tion and a lack of re­spect in the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing the role and treat­ment of prison of­fi­cers.

In a state­ment from its pres­i­dent, Ger­ard Gor­don, the POA said it had been led to be­lieve that the po­lice and the reg­i­ment would as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­mand­ed in­mates dur­ing the emer­gency. How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion claimed that same re­spon­si­bil­i­ty has now fall­en on prison of­fi­cers, who were re­cent­ly brand­ed “cor­rupt” by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“No pro­vi­sions have been made to ac­com­mo­date our of­fi­cers, and no clear op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to en­sure or­der and safe­ty,” the re­lease said.