KASKI: A team of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has arrived in Kaski district to take stock of the jailbirds in the wake of COVID-19 infection.
The team of the NHRC arrived in Kaski after making its inspection visit to Jhapa, Sunsari, Siraha, Jumla, Kailali, Kanchanpur and Surkhet districts.
On the occasion, NHRC Member Sudip Pathak said that risk of coronavirus was high among the jailbirds in the prison houses.
“The prisons are occupied with more than 200 per cent of their capacity. In such management, the risk of coronavirus is high,” Pathak said.
He shared that the jailbirds in the prison houses were not in the position to maintain physical distancing due to poor physical infrastructures.
According to him, most of the prison houses have not developed isolation and quarantine facilities adding that use of face masks, maintaining of physical distancing and availability of hand washer and sanitizers were not as expected due to the sorry state of the physical infrastructures at the prisons.
He further shared that the NHRC is carrying out monitoring and field inspection of the country’s prison houses, and is submitting a report to the government on October 14.
During the inspection, he said that the NHRC team found that 519 jail birds out of 592 in Siraha prison house were infected with the virus and the isolation beds of 75 others were in poor condition.
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