The government is considering raising the salaries and allowances of prison officers in the coming Budget, Minister of Justice and National Integration Harshana Nanayakkara said, according to the Daily Mirror.

He was speaking at a discussion on conditions faced by officers at Dumbara Prison, held after the establishment of a joint mechanism covering the Dumbara-Bogambara Prison and the Pallekele Open Prison. The Minister also inspected the premises and spoke with inmates about the difficulties they face.

A standing emergency mechanism at every prison

The more concrete commitment is structural. Nanayakkara said joint mechanisms would be set up at all prisons, to give a coordinated emergency response to “possible conflict situations” and to streamline inmate welfare work.

The mechanism brings together the Department of Prisons, Police, Navy, Air Force, Water Supply Board and Fire Department for joint action.

The phrasing is doing quiet work. A standing multi-agency response arrangement for conflict inside prisons is what was absent in July, when 28 inmates died in a clash at Negombo Prison — the deadliest prison incident in years, followed by an autopsy inquiry into the 28 deaths and sealed testimony from the chief jailer. Survivors were moved to Bogambara, one of the two prisons now covered by the new arrangement. The Daily Mirror does not draw the connection.

Pay and overcrowding are the two grievances that have run through prison officers’ complaints all year, against a system holding some 39,000 inmates and a policy debate on house arrest as a relief measure.

Those attending included Kandy and Matale Districts Deputy Inspector General of Police Sudath Marasinghe, Kandy Additional District Secretary Lalith Ampawala, Manikhinna Divisional Secretary Kaushalya Dissanayake, Dumbara-Bogambara Prison Superintendent L.P. Warnakulasuriya, Assistant Prison Superintendent H.M.D. Herath and Pallekele Assistant Prison Superintendent Mangala Walipitiya.

Update: the request has reached the President, and Negombo compensation is moving

NewsFirst filed its own account of the same event on 18 September, adding three elements the Daily Mirror did not carry.

The proposal has a route. Requests for salary increments and enhanced allowances were submitted through the Commissioner General of Prisons — so this is a departmental submission working its way up, not a minister thinking aloud.

It has already been put to the President. Nanayakkara said he had held discussions with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on the possibility of granting prison officers a special allowance through the coming Budget. That moves the story past “under consideration” by the ministry: the specific instrument being discussed is a special allowance, and it has been raised at the top.

Compensation for the Negombo dead is being processed. The Minister said steps are being taken to compensate the families of prison officers killed in the unrest at Negombo Prison. That connects this to the riot in which 28 died and a Rs. 2 million compensation figure was reported in July. Neither outlet says whether the officers’ families are being paid on the same basis as the others, how many officer deaths are involved, or why the payments are still outstanding.

NewsFirst frames the salary move more firmly than the Daily Mirror did — its headline says the government “plans” a hike, where the Daily Mirror reported only that the matter would get attention. Nothing in either account records an approved figure.

Not reported

Neither outlet gives a figure, a percentage or a cost for the proposed increase, and neither says what prison officers are currently paid or what their unions have asked for. Neither says whether Treasury has agreed to anything, or what the President said in response to the request for a special allowance.

It does not give a date for the Budget, say when the joint mechanisms will reach the remaining prisons, or explain who commands the mechanism when it is activated — the question that matters if four armed and uniformed services are to act together inside a prison.

The list of attendees includes a “Brigadier K.S.P.”, with the surname missing from the Daily Mirror’s account. No other verified newsroom had carried the story at the time of writing.