{"id":33875,"date":"2013-04-03T19:49:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T23:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=33875"},"modified":"2013-04-03T23:45:37","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T03:45:37","slug":"govt-plans-to-upgrade-detention-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2013\/04\/govt-plans-to-upgrade-detention-centre","title":{"rendered":"Gov’t. Plans To Upgrade Detention Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The government plans to upgrade \u201cvexing\u201d conditions at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre, Minister of Immigration and Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell said yesterday.<\/p>\n

Mitchell said the upgrades will cost \u201chundreds of thousands of dollars\u201d and with design work already complete, construction should start some time in the new fiscal year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe detention center is a vexing issue,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cIt requires substantial repairs and the prime minister gave an instruction about a month ago for the new dormitories to be constructed that had been burned down some 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they have to be replaced, so the construction is going to take place. We\u2019ve done some minor repairs to plumbing and so forth but the facility is not what it should be, so we\u2019re going over operational procedures and trying to upgrade the facility. But the main thing for me is I don\u2019t want people staying there for any long period of time, they really should go back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince these are border states that we are dealing with, Haiti in one case which is the largest number and Cubans on the other hand, there\u2019s no reason why they should be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell was referring to the immigrants from Haiti and Cuba who routinely make up the bulk of detainees at the center.<\/p>\n

Director of Immigration William Pratt said building new dormitories would go a long way to alleviate overcrowding at the holding facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully we will make sufficient funding in the budget to accommodate the reconstruction of those dorms,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cOf course I guess we can do some work with upgrading the kitchen facilities to cater more to industrial cooking. We have industrial stoves but we need some new sinks, etc. We have some work going on now, the painting of dorms and [fixing] cracks in the walls. The challenge is the space and so I think if we can get those two dorms rebuilt we will have more adequate space. That\u2019s why we try to repatriate as quickly as possible, because of our limited space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pratt said Immigration officials had two repatriation exercises last week. On Wednesday a group of Haitian immigrants were flown to Port-au-Prince while a group of Dominicans were flown to the Dominican Republic on Thursday.<\/p>\n

By Taneka Thompson<\/span><\/em>
\nGuardian Senior Reporter<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government plans to upgrade \u201cvexing\u201d conditions at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre, Minister of Immigration and Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1494,926,1495],"class_list":["post-33875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-detention-centre","tag-fred-mitchell","tag-upgrade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}