Inmates will begin moving into the old Bogambara Prison in Kandy next week, Commissioner General of Prisons Prasad Hemantha said, with about 90 per cent of renovation work now complete, NewsFirst reported on Saturday.
Officers are still being assigned to the facility, the Commissioner General said.
The same deadline, a month apart
The Department of Prisons gave the same timeline a month ago. On 12 August it said renovation at Bogambara had “reached its final stage” and that it expected to begin transferring inmates as early as the following week.
That transfer did not happen. Saturday’s statement puts the work at 90 per cent complete and the move one week away — a slip of roughly a month against a facility that was already described as nearly finished.
NewsFirst does not note the earlier deadline or ask why it was missed.
Retired officers may be called back
Separately, the department said discussions are under way on re-employing retired prison officers to address a shortage of staff.
Hemantha said the measure is being considered because of the current shortfall in officer numbers. The report gives no figure for how many posts are vacant, how many retirees might return, or on what terms.
The staffing question bears directly on Bogambara: the Commissioner General said assigning officers to the reopened facility is still in progress.
How Bogambara came back into use
Bogambara had been closed and earmarked for tourism development before it was re-gazetted as a prison in early July by Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara, along with the former Mahamodara Hospital premises in Galle. The step followed the Negombo Prison riot, which forced the relocation of most of that prison’s population; around 700 inmates were moved to Angunakolapelessa, Bogambara, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kuruwita.
Officials have described the arrangement as temporary, pending a wider response to prison overcrowding.
It sits awkwardly with a separate commitment. On 31 August, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Prof. Ruwan Ranasinghe said Bogambara would be handed back to the tourism authorities by next year and that a fresh request for proposals would be issued. The department is now preparing to move prisoners in.
No outlet has put the two timelines to either official.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not say how many inmates will be transferred next week, from which prisons they will come, or what Bogambara’s capacity is. It does not say what remains in the outstanding 10 per cent of renovation work, what the work has cost, or how long the facility is expected to hold inmates before any handover to tourism.
The report was not carried by Ada Derana, the Daily Mirror, Hiru News, the Island, Daily FT or Colombo Gazette at the time of writing, leaving it single-sourced.
