The Malawi Prisons Inspectorate has appealed to authorities to equip the country’s poisons with security scanners.

The plea follows a 2020-2021 Report of the Inspection of Prisons and Police Cells which has disclosed that 450 phones were found at Zomba Central Prison.

Presenting findings of the report to the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee, the Inspectorate’s Chairperson Kennam Manda said it is only through provision of security scanners which can contain the trend.

He said: “They conducted an operation particularly at the Zomba Central Prison, where most of these scams seem to be perpetrated from.

“They recovered about 450 cell phones, which were being used, but in order to do that, it had to take quite a lot of physical manpower.”

Manda added that the operation, which uses manpower, is not effective because is tiresome and there is need to provide the scanners.

“So the recommendation that we’re making is that because if you have to use physical manpower, then you have to close down maybe 1 cell block for three days, which might also be a violation of the rights of the inmates.

“So the recommendation that we’re making is that the prisons should be provided with these ones [scanners] which can be used to scan for cell phones, or at least some type of scan which can be used to scan for cell phone,” Manda said.

Responding to the plea, the Committee’s Chairperson Peter Dimba concurred with the Inspectorate that there is need for tightening security in the country’s prisons.

“Physically they have tried but they have failed to control the smuggling of cell phones into the prisons, so obviously as a committee we will come up with a report from their report.

“And present to Parliament and that will be one of the issues that will be highlighted, so we could buy them scanners and if they use scanners definitely the problem of having cell phones could be minimised,” said Dimba.

In a related bizarre development, an inmate at Zomba Central Prison was found with two cell phones in his intestines in an attempt to smuggle the handsets into the jail.