Mansehra jail inmates undergo skill training

ABBOTTABAD: The first batch of 20 prisoners of Mansehra jail have completed their three-month training course and started making beads, purses, rosaries, jewelry items and decoration pieces.

The items were showcased at the display centres of the Prison Department as part of marketing. The Prison Department had launched the initiative to equip inmates with different livelihood skills in collaboration with civil society organizations.

Addressing the participants of the ceremony, Superintendent District Prison Mansehra Nagina Mehsud said the training was aimed at reintegrating the inmates into families and making them economically and psychologically resilient and productive citizens

Deputy Superintendent Jail Rashad Ahmed, Human Development Organization Director Program Mohammad Ahsan Khan, Assistant Superintendents Usman Ali, Farhan Khan, Nisar Ali and others were in attendance.

The beads craft programme was launched in May this year in Haripur, Mansehra and Battagram prisons by the Human Development Organization under its “livelihoods and mental health development initiative for inmates”.

Nagina Mehsud said the decades-old concept of detention and coercion had changed in recent years. She said her department had directed its resources towards reformation of

inmates.

“Imparting vocational training to prisoners is aimed at helping them to reform and return to their families as positively changed personalities,” she said. She expressed the hope that the three-month training would enable the prisoners to earn a better living after detention and support their families.

The official lauded the efforts of HDO’s team for their practical input in the reformation and rehabilitation of the prisoners.Ahsan Khan, director programme HDO, briefed the participants about the beads craft training programme and said that poverty was the chief reason that contributed to mental health complications and criminal tendencies.

He said during the three-phase training programme a total of 120 prisoners would be trained for six months while these trained inmates would further develop the beads craft skills of 360 prisoners with the support of HDO. Later, Nagina Mehsud distributed course completion certificates among the trainees.