HARARE – Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison is facing a major outbreak of diarrhoea, TB and hepatitis B, an inmate has revealed in a High Court action.
Prisoner Tautai Dzodzo says the facility which was designed to carry 1,360 inmates currently has over 2,000 prisoners. At least 500 inmates share two toilets, but the prison complex has had no running water since November 8 following a power outage that has affected pumping.
“The shortage of water has resulted in an outbreak of serious diseases including diarrhoea, hepatitis B and tuberculosis. Regrettably, prison officials do not separate sick prisoners from the healthy ones,” Dodzo said in an affidavit filed at the Harare High Court on Monday, seeking an order for prison authorities to be compelled to improve conditions.
Prisoners are also at risk of contracting Covid-19 as they share crowded cells, with no social distancing being observed per World Health Organisation guidelines.
Cited as respondents are prisons boss Commissioner General Moses Chihobvu, justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, agriculture minister Anxious Masuka, finance minister Mthuli Ncube and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission.
“The first respondent (Chinobvu) certainly does not feed us at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison with the diet that is laid out in relevant regulations and Instruments linked to the Prisons Act,” Dodzo added in his application.
“That failure is therefore a violation of the law, an infringement that must now be rectified urgently given the heightened risk to health and welfare of prisoners that has emerged from the current water crisis.”
The prisoner is being represented by lawyers instructed by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.
Dodzo urgently wants prison authorities to put temporary measures in place to improve access to water which includes the deployment of mobile water bowsers, and for ill prisoners to be separated from the healthy ones.
He also wants Ncube ordered to immediately release funds for supplementary daily water supplies to the jail and the prison clinic to be fully stocked with all essential medicines and the requisite technology.
He told the High Court that inmates now rely on relatives to bring them drinking water.
Prisoners now fetch water from an open pond within the prison complex for all other purposes, the court heard.
