The National Prisons Services (NPS) has announced plans to build more prisons in various parts of the country to ease congestion in the existing facilities.

Addressing journalists, yesterday, the NPS Commissioner General, Mary Gahonzire, announced, "by 2012 we (NPS) shall be fully meeting international standards in terms of accommodating inmates.”

Chief Inspector Louis Marie Kayijuka, the in-charge of infrastructure at the NPS, said a prison is already under construction in Gikombe, Musanze District, with the capacity of at least 8,000 prisoners. He said the new prison will house inmates from Gisenyi and Ruhengeri prisons.

He added that NPS has also acquired a piece of land in Mageragere Sector, Gasabo District, where an ultramodern prison facility that will house about 10,000 inmates, will be built.

Gahonzire said that the NPS had entered into strategic partnerships with prisons authorities in Kenya and UK, and that they expect to do the same with Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa and Malawi.

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