Annual savings of almost R2m are expected for the St Albans Correctional Service Centre following the opening of a stateof-the-art bakery on Friday.
Deputy justice & correctional services minister Thabang Makwetla and Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Mongameli Bobani officially opened the bakery, which is fully run by medium B inmates who have served the most of their sentences.
St Albans becomes the ninth facility to open its own functional bakery since the first centre was opened in 1992.
With construction having begun in 2017, Makwetla said the opening of the bakery was in line with the department’s quest of establishing self-sufficiency within its centres.
On Friday, Makwetla said he was grateful he came to St Albans for something positive.
“Today is an exciting moment because we have come to St Albans not because there is a problem, but because of a very positive development.
“It is important that through projects of this nature we have opportunities for our inmates to be involved in production of the things they need in life, and so they gain skills so that when they leave here they can have a better life and new beginnings,” he said.
During the formal programme while addressing inmates, prison staff and members of the religious fraternity, Makwetla said: “Our integrated and partnership-driven approach towards rehabilitation, skills development, reintegration and economic empowerment also allows us to take a step closer in our mission to enhance the self- sufficiency of the department of correctional services and other government departments.
“It is our duty as correctional services to rehabilitate and equip inmates with the necessary skills to become employable and productive citizens.”
The new bakery will supply bread to almost 6,000 inmates across seven centres under the jurisdiction of St Albans management area by supplying slightly more than 2,000 loaves of bread a day.
The inmates at the bakery were offered specialised training internally and it is planned to increase the number of inmates in the programme.
The process of accrediting the bakery is also in the pipeline to ensure that offenders working at the bakery would receive accredited training and a certificate of skills acquired.
Ntombamzi Jinikwa, who is in charge of the bakery and the training of the inmates, said it only took a week to train the inmates, as the majority of work was done automatically.
“Twelve inmates have formally begun working on the programme while four are still under training. I am looking at getting up to 20 inmates working for the bakery,” she said.
“When we started the project as a pilot in May, we baked bread for one centre [PE Prison] only; we now supply four centres under the St Albans management area.”
An inmate who has served 10 years of his life sentence for murder and robbery, Sivuyile Benjamin, 34, who is a head baker at the bakery, said he was happy this project was launched by the department.
“My job here is to check if all the work that is required to bake bread is done correctly.
“Having this skill has made me very happy because it means that when I leave here, I will at least have a skill that I can contribute to the centre.”
While in prison, Benjamin has attained a level 2 certificate in engineering and related designs with the East Cape Midlands College in 2010.
“[If I could], I would tell the youth that crime is not the way to go – I have wasted 10 years and 7 months of my life whereas I could have had a qualification and a great job,” he said.