The Ministry of Internal Security has suspended fifteen prison warden cadets from  Duha Training School, The New Times has learnt.

According to officials in the ministry, the candidates were suspended after it was established that they lied about their ages in order to meet one of the criteria for undergoing the cadet training, a fact that has been vehemently denied by the affected people.

These candidates have since petitioned the Office of the Ombudsman, saying they were unfairly suspended, since they had already spent two months in training. However, the decision by the Ombudsman’s office could not be determined by press time.

”We were enrolled by the ministry and called to attend the training. After two months they are telling us that we lied about our particulars. Why did they then call us for the training and waste our two months,” reads the protest letter that was presented to the Ombudsman. 

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Internal Security, Penelope Kantarama, said that the ministry was forced to suspend them after discovering that the trainees had lied.

"We can’t just suspend our trainees without sound reason, but for more details you can contact the minister,” Kantarama reiterated.

Efforts to reach Minister Fazil Harerimana on phone were futile as he persistently could not pick his phone.

When contacted, the director of the National Prisons Service, Steven Balinda, admitted that some errors were made during the vetting exercise before the candidates were sent for the course.

He said that some of these candidates forged documents because they were hungry for jobs adding that the vetting exercise would continue throughout the period of the training. He said that more candidates were likely to be sent away for poor performance.

Balinda said that it was not possible to halt the training to finish with the vetting because government has already sunk a lot of money in the course.

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