Some 48 Chief Warders and one in-service trainee recently graduated from the Buea-based National School of Penitentiary Administration (ENAP). The graduates began training on 15 January, 2011 and rounded up with the graduation ceremony on 6 July 2012, with two of those admitted having abandoned. It was the 7th batch of new Chief Warders and the 14th for the lone come-back trainee of the same rank. Present at the occasion was the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice in-charge of Penitentiary Administration, Doh Jerome Penbaga, who chaired the 19th Ordinary Board of Directors’ session at the ENAP campus, 5 July, the eve of the graduation ceremony.
After visiting the proposed site of ENAP in Lysoka near Muea-Buea, the Secretary of State in the company of Board Members, announced ENAP’s opening up to foreign students, notably from the Central African Sub-Region, from next January. He stressed that certificates from foreign schools will be cross-checked with the issuing institutions. He declared that ENAP would from the next recruitment admit technical specialties like agriculture, livestock breeding and handicraft to revamp the production prisons and other trades critical for the social rehabilitation of prisoners. Although limitedly known to the common person as prison guards, Doh Jerome Penbaga outlined the duties of the penitentiary personnel as framed in criminal justice, maintenance of order, public security and defence.
ENAP’s Director, Mrs. Fonkem nee Fofung Manyi Immaculate, in her speech said Student Administrators of Prison, Superintendents and trainee Superintendents currently in school are awaiting their graduation ceremony next December. She prided the quality of training offered in the school and appealed to government to improve on the buildings and other infrastructure.
