Prison officers traumatised

Scores of employees at Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Dodds are still struggling to recover from the mental and physical trauma inflicted on them during an almost three-week lockdown of the St. Philip facility.

So says industrial relations consultant to the Prison Officers’ Association Senator Caswell Franklyn, who blames authorities’ poor decision-making for a multiplicity of “legitimate” illnesses now affecting nearly one-third of the staff.

The trade unionist’s comments follow a disclosure from Home Affairs Minister Wilfred Abrahams that at least 99 of the St. Philip prison’s 350 warders went on sick leave shortly after receiving the green light to resume active duty. This, Abrahams said, was placing a significant strain on their colleague prison officers, as well as on the resources of the Barbados Defenpe Force (BDF) and the Royal Barbados Police Force (RBPF) whose officers have been posted at Dodds since the outbreak started at the turn of the year.

According to Franklyn, who is General Secretary of the Unity Workers’ Union (UWU) and an Opposition senator, the afflicted officers are suffering from mental trauma, while others are only now receiving medical care that was denied them during the three-week lockdown period. But he also admits that some officers are simply staying away because they do not trust their employer to keep them safe.

“These are some of the reasons why prison officers are reluctant [to return]. People may think that because you don’t have physical symptoms or an open wound that you are not ill, but some of these [officers] are going ‘off’,” said the veteran trade unionist.

“One of the people I know was not allowed to have his medication while locked down. His pressure was sky high and at the point of getting a stroke and he couldn’t get his medication. So there are various and varying reasons. Many people are under severe stress and when the authorities of the country can treat you in this way, you can’t feel good and it will bother your mind. Those workers are genuinely ill and they were made ill,” contended Senator Franklyn.

Superintendent of Prisons Colonel John Nurse declined to comment on the nature of the ailments affecting the 99 staff members or suggestions that poor decision-making from prison authorities was somehow responsible. Instead, he suggested that any queries be directed to Minister Abrahams. The Minister was, however, unable to take calls from Barbados TODAY on Tuesday.

During Saturday’s press conference, the minister made it clear he was not raising questions about ulterior motives for the abundance of absences, adding that he would not be “looking behind a doctor’s signature”.

“I believe that a sick certificate is exactly that until it is proven otherwise. So if someone comes out of quarantine and is declared healthy and fit to leave quarantine today and sends in a sick certificate tomorrow, I have to accept it for what it is, that something is wrong with them,” Abrahams explained.

On the last day of 2020, Prime Minister Mia Mottley spoke about the prison outbreak and said that all employees at HMP Dodds would be tested for the viral illness. The facility was then placed on lockdown as scores of staff and inmates tested positive for COVID-19.

But the Prison Officers’ Association consultant claims that at the time, many of the warders were asked to report to the prison under the impression they would be tested and asked to quarantine at home, but were shocked to find out that they could not leave.

He added that some warders are mentally drained from the experience of being exposed to infected colleagues while on lockdown and argued that many of the ongoing issues could have been avoided if a state of emergency was declared at the prison and warders sent to quarantine while police and soldiers took over full operations.

“When they realized that such a large number of prison officers had tested positive, they should have excused all of them from the prison… so that the [infected] people could get better and you would have people dressed in the appropriate gear working among the prisoners,” Franklyn once again stressed.

“There were no beds for them and some men slept on the floor. The food was awful, [prison authorities] locked down the prison without bringing in sanitizers, soap, or toilet paper, but they brought in body bags. If you bring people to work under those conditions, don’t you think they will be traumatized?

“Some of them are saying that they are not protected there and they are not going in. They have a reasonable fear that their lives are in danger and they are refusing to work. The law says that if they don’t legitimately feel safe going in there, they don’t have to,” he added.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)