Ground-breaking of new Luganville Correction Facility today

The Minister for Justice Ronald Warsal, his two political advisers, officials from the lands ministry and director general of the ministry of justice and the director of the correctional services department are on Santo Island for the ceremony.

They will be joined by Mayor of Luganville and his councilors, officials from the Sanma provincial council, chiefs and church leaders on this occasion.

The new site for the facility lies west to the old and the current deteriorating facility, adjacent to the Northern District Hospital.

The new facility will include a high risk unit, a remand unit and a medium risk unit.

The New Zealand government is funding the building project at a cost of VT170 million.

Director of Correctional Services Department, Johnny Marango says the K & D Enterprise Company, a local business in Luganville, Santo, has won the tender for preparatory work as well as for the construction of the new facility.

Mr Marango said work on the project is expected to be completed by November this year and opening will take place by the end of the year.

The project will provide important benefits to the Luganville community and to the northern provinces.

The project will see three new units built below the current Correctional Centre site (two cell wings plus a central operational centre). These units will replace two of the existing units. These existing units are old and need to be replaced to improve security at the Correctional Centre. The new units will also increase capacity at the Correctional Centre.

There will also be further employment opportunities once the new units are operational and new opportunities to provide goods and services to the Correctional Centre.

In 2014, the Department spent VT43.5 M on operation of the Luganville Correctional Centre and a further VT11.1 M on operation of probation services based out of Luganville. This expenditure will increase significantly once the new units are operational in 2016.