|
Kurt Sansone
Crooks turning into cooks? Or is it simply entrepreneurial spirit at the Corradino Correctional Facility? Baking bread and generating revenue and competing for commercial tenders and actually winning them is the talk of town at Corradino.
Inmates forming part of the bakery co-operative operating from the CCF have recently won the Health Department tender for the provision of bread to hospitals, MaltaToday can reveal.
The decision to award the competitive tender to the CCF bakery has raised eyebrows in the commercial sector. They contend the situation could amount to unfair competition since costs to run a prison bakery with no pressure to offer adequate wages can be much lower than costs borne by commercial outlets.
A spokesman for the Home Affairs Ministry said the wage packet for inmates forming part of the bakery co-operative is still under discussion but confirmed that the prisons department will be billing the bakery for overhead costs such as a water and electricity expenses. Wages will be paid from the co-operative’s profit, the official said.
Inmates performing work duties at the CCF are paid a nominal allowance by the department, Lm2 a week, but prison insiders have expressed their apprehension at the higher ‘wages’ bakers in the co-operative will be earning, possibly causing friction between inmates.
In the past the prison bakery used to provide bread to other Government institutions such as Mount Carmel Hospital for free. When the provision of services to hospitals was liberalised the prison bakery lost out to the private sector.
Inmates have as far back as 1996 proposed the setting up of a co-operative to make their time at the CCF more worthwhile. The project finally took off this year and all the financial aspects are being co-ordinated by the CCF auditor.
Inmates talking to MaltaToday said this was their own initiative to rake in some extra cash, which the CCF Director would be able to use for the benefit of prisoners. “It is one way of making good use of the bakery equipment in prison but more important a positive way to encourage prisoners to engage in productive work,” an inmate told this newspaper.
The bakery will be under the watchful eye of two prison officials whose wages are paid by the department, but the Home Affairs official said that these were already deployed there in the past and so would not represent an additional cost to the department.
“All profits will be for the benefit of all inmates at CCF,” the ministry official told MaltaToday when asked whether the department would have a share of the profits made by the business venture.
Even if it does raise the spectre of home-grown cheap labour competing in a dire domestic free market, baking bread for hospitals and earning a living off it may be one way of rehabilitating criminals.
Serving a prison sentence may turn out to be a profitable business venture after all.
kurt@newsworksltd.com
|
