Since Sunday May 27th 2012 the inmates led by the inmates association started a strike at the Point Blanche Prison.
After the previous strike where inmates that wanted to work were threatened and beaten, prison management decided to take the necessary precautions and lock down all the inmates to protect those that wanted to and are working.
The inmates association was told by management that they were responsible for sharing the meals to the inmates and were told to appoint one person to do so. They refused to appoint an inmate to get and share their meals cell by cell, meant that they did not eat. On Friday evening around 7:00 pm, the inmates became very rowdy, making a lot of noise and started fires because they did not get their meals brought to the cells for them by the guards. The police were called in and order was restored.
On Saturday morning around 08: 30 when the watch commander and one of the nurses went to share medication to the inmates that needed their medication, two inmates pushed the gate on the watch commander and grabbed the keys from her in order to open the gates to the other sections. The intention was to open the gates to the other cells and free more inmates. Luckily they grabbed the wrong set of keys and could not open the gate to the other sections.
The management team decided to call the police to the prison, stop the disturbance from escalating and restore order. The inmates that caused the uproar were taken out of the prison and brought to another location.
The order was restored. The management team is now speaking with the inmates to eventually have them get back to work as per normal.