By Draxon Maloya
The community of St Egidio in the city of Mzuzu has joined forces with Mzuzu Prison management in a fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The initiative has enabled the community of St Egidio to provide material to Mzuzu Prison whose inmates are going to make 500 face masks through tailoring.
Speaking at the Prison on Saturday an executive member of the grouping responsible for prison fellowship, Fumbani Gondwe expressed the need to maximize some of the talent and skills hidden behind the prison walls.
“We thought of bringing this job to Mzuzu Prison because this is one way of supporting both the marginalized and vulnerable societies in our community.
This partnership will help us provide the face masks meant to assist inmates at all prisons in the Northern Region,” Gondwe said
The grouping also reached out to the inmates at Nkhatabay Prison where a donation of face masks, soaps and food items was also made.
Mzuzu Pison Officer In charge, Zachaeus Malekano M’bawa expressed gratitude with the partnership which he says will assist the facility in the fight against Covid-19.
“We have hidden talents here which we are failing to utilize for the benefit of our communities, the little we get from such initiatives will help our facility in ensuring that our inmates are well protected from coronavirus,” M’bawa said
However, the Officer in charge expressed fears that it might be possible that 50 percent of the inmates at Mzuzu Prison might have contracted coronavirus going by a random sampling test the prison authority conducted in conjunction with the management of Light House.
The state president, Lazarus Macarthy Chakwera on Wednesday last week pardoned at total of 499 inmates from various prisons in the country as one way of decongesting the prisons in the wake of Covid-19.
As of Saturday, Mzuzu Prison which was designed to keep 550 inmates was hosting a total of 784 prisoners of which 88 are females.
The community of St Egidio is a global forum strategically formulated to assist vulnerable groups of the society and has its secretariat in the City of Mzuzu.