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Source of the prison guards union reported this Wednesday to the Renaissance that “there are guards with asthma and diabetes who are being threatened with disciplinary proceedings by prison officials, who believe that the mask causes alarm among prisoners”.
The case will have occurred in the prison establishments in Viseu and Alcoentre.
The same source reveals that at this point the prison guard body is not properly protected to to face the Covid-19 pandemic, which in Portugal has already caused two deaths and infected 642 people.
“We don’t have gloves or, when they do, they are not enough for everyone; we don’t have alcohol or dispensers at the entrance and at the guard stations, ”he points out, stressing that there are, for example, 24 masks for a universe of half a hundred guards.
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At this time, the lines of family members, without adequate distance, at the door of the establishments to deliver clean clothes to prisoners have been long – a service that does not exist inside the jails.
It is up to the guards to search these bags of clothing that come from abroad and that, as reported by Renaissance, are isolated for 24 hours until delivered to the inmate.
The truth is that, according to a union source, the same guard who does this search then goes on to other functions within the prison, without any safeguard.
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Prison guards complain about the absence of isolation rooms that meet the requirements. An example of this is the case of the Lisbon Prison, where, last weekend, an inmate will have started with suspicious symptoms.
“The nurses put him in the cafeteria of the infirmary [o espaço definido como sala de isolamento] that not even a door has, but a railing that does not isolate the space in question ”, denounces the source.
Protection for short, says Government
These and other complaints arrived yesterday, Tuesday, in an open letter to the Prime Minister, António Costa. Today, the Ministry of Justice called all the guards in the Guard corps to a meeting.
To what Renaissance he found out, the Assistant Secretary of State and Justice, Mário Belo Morgado, regretted the situation and guaranteed that within two days protection material for prison guards should begin to arrive: gloves, masks and disinfectant solution.
Guards have long since sent the General Directorate for Reinsertion and Prison Services (DGRSP) a document with recommendations for addressing the constraints that the coronavirus is causing – such as, for example, work schedules with less staff, a map of replacements and mobility of workers. guards, as well as the end of graduations. But the document fell on deaf ears.
In a note sent this Wednesday evening to the newsrooms, the Ministry of Justice clarifies that “it informed the union structures of the measures that have been adopted in the context of the current emergency situation in matters of public health, of the measures to be implemented to ensure readiness the number of prison guards and to ensure the limitation of personal contacts in order to reduce the risk of contagion, as well as the rules foreseen in terms of articulation between assistance to the family and the necessary availability of professionals ”.
In spite of all this, the atmosphere inside the prisons among the prisoners is one of tranquility, however, cases of prisoners who are refusing to leave precariously because they consider that they are safer inside prison facilities have started to appear.
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