Press conference hosted by Minister of Home Affairs and Information, Wilfred Abrahams re: the Government Industrial School. (PMO)

Cabinet has approved the start of construction to retrofit the Government Industrial School’s, Dodds, St. Philip facility to facilitate the transfer of females from the Barrows, St. Lucy location.

This was announced by Minister of Home Affairs and Information, Wilfred Abrahams, during a press conference on Saturday to provide an update on interventions being held at GIS and Dodds Prison.

“We are looking to move the young ladies from Barrows to a retrofitted facility at Dodds, in St. Philip which they will share with the boys once the proper construction work has been done, and the retrofit done to enable the girls to be properly separated from the boys in the facility,” he said.

Once completed, the females presently being housed at Barrows, St. Lucy are expected to move to better accommodations, and have access to programmes that are more suited to their needs, and with services that better facilitate what they need to accomplish.

“If they have psychiatric concerns, [then] they must get the proper psychiatric assistance; if they have psychological concerns or complaints, then they must have the psychological interventions that suit what their complaints are.

“It is our intention that when they move, they are moving in to as optimal a circumstance as we can do for them,” Mr. Abrahams said.

julia.rawlins-bentham@barbados.gov.bb

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