THE country’s prisons and immigration depots are overcrowded, the Home Ministry said in a parliamentary reply yesterday.
The reasons, said Deputy Home Minister Ismail Mohamed Said, were due to a higher number of foreigners being jailed and closed borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There have been instances of overcrowding,” Ismail told Chang Ming Kai (Alor Setar-PKR) during the Dewan Rakyat’s special chamber yesterday.
Chang posed a series of questions on Malaysia’s refugee policy as the country had yet to ratify the 1951 International Convention on Refugees.
Among the queries that Chang asked for were the current number of foreigners and detainees as well as Rohingya inmates.
While Ismail did not distinguish between documented and undocumented migrants, he provided a few general statistics.
As of July 1:
- 60,983 people are serving prison sentences but overall capacity nationwide is 47,650 people at any given time. About 21%, or 13,319 people, are foreigners.
- 5,163 people have been detained at immigration depots while overall nationwide capacity is 12,530 people at any given time.
- As for Rohingya inmates, 15 of them are in prison while one is detained at the Henry Gurney School as per Child Act 2001. Also 1,340 are held at immigration depots.
As for costs, an average of RM50 a day is needed for the upkeep of a prisoner while an average of RM90 a day is needed to take care of a detainee at the immigration depot.
The money is used for basic necessities, clothes, toiletries, depot and prison maintenance, among others. – July 21, 2020.
