Correctional Services Minister, Ronald Lamola, says his department’s self-sustainability model does not include those who are convicted of felonies.

He launched the Kuyasa Combined Learning Centre at the Oudtshoorn Correctional facility, in the Little Karoo, under the model earlier this week.

The facility boasts a vegetable farm. This is part of the department’s efforts to utilise offender labour.

The plan is to expand the model to correctional facilities in the rest of the country.

Lamola explains the categories of offenders that the model includes: “It’s medium offenders, not above 15 years or 10 years and so forth. We now recognise that there is a bit for us to help them to be skilled and also for them to repay society while they are doing this work for us. But also something that they can do for society to help them to reskill to be able to be rehabilitated so that they are ready to rejoin society.”

Source: SABC News