As part of their Valentine’s Day celebration, Asafo FM, a local radio station, operating in Elmina in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Municipality of the Central Region, has donated food items to inmates of the Ankaful Maximum Security Prisons.
The donation worth hundreds of Ghana cedis included cloths, football, shoes, toiletries, rice, drinks, water, fish and cooking oil amongst other foodstuff.
Presenting the items, General Manager of the FM Station, Mr. Emmanuel Garbrah explained that they were motivated by the story behind St Valentine, who was also imprisoned even though he was a man of God.
He indicated that most people are in prison through no fault of theirs.
Mr. Garbrah disclosed that the gesture was just the first phase of many things the station hopes to do for the inmates, adding that they intend to adopt the prison and extend a helping hand to them from time to time.
The manager appealed to other corporate institutions and organisations as well as philanthropists to emulate their gesture in order to better conditions at the prisons.
“When we don’t treat them well while they are in prison, they continue to engage in criminal activities when they come back because they don’t feel loved,” he noted.
For his part, Central Regional Prisons Public Relations Officer (PRO), Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Daniel Machator, commended the station for the kind gesture, saying it will enhance the welfare of the inmates.
“We all know that GH ₵1.80p per day as feeding fee for each inmate is woefully inadequate so this foodstuff will go a long way in putting smiles on their faces,” he said.
He appealed to the general public to assist the prisons with more foodstuff, medicines and vehicles to convey inmates to the hospital and court to enable them discharge their duties well in reforming them.
He hinted that the facility which takes 2,000 inmates currently houses close to 850 inmates with more facilities being built to help decongest the other prisons in the country.
ASP Machator further appealed to government to speed up the second phase of the prison which includes a trade learning workshop, schools, mosque, church, a condemned block and biogas plant to help in cooking meals for the inmates to enable the place to operate at full capacity.
The crew from the radio station later played a football game with the prison inmates where they were beaten by six goals to nothing.
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