The Punjab Cabinet led by the Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday okayed the direct recruitment to fill 305 posts of warders through the Punjab Police Recruitment Board by taking these posts out of the purview of Subordinate Services Selection Board.
According to a spokesperson of the Chief Minister’s Office, this decision would be instrumental in improving the prison management by providing adequate manpower in jails. The entire process of recruitment would be completed within four months.
Punjab’s jails currently have more than 24,000 convicts/undertrials. However, there is a shortage of requisite staff for supervising these convicts. The paucity of staff is being felt more acutely since the Nabha jailbreak incident of November 27, 2016, and needs to be beefed up to check recurrence of such incidents, the Cabinet felt.
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The high-powered committee constituted to probe the Nabha jailbreak incident had also identified a shortage of staff in the jails as a major cause of the incident.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet also approved the Annual Administrative Report of the Home Affairs & Justice Department for the year 2017.