“What is good about it, despite the huge challenges of overcrowding, the management has been reporting to us that this year, there hasn’t been a single escape.

“… There are challenges with our performance (but) you can see there are pockets of good work that our officials are doing,” he said.

Deputy Minister Makwetla inspected three facilities within the centre – the Hlumani food processing centre, the Albertina Sisulu Mother Unit and a crèche.

After the visit, he said Pollsmoor was one of the few centres that had a food processing facility, which stores, processes and preserves vegetables, used in the prepartion of meals for inmates and officials.

“Pollsmoor is one of the most important centres for Correctional Services in the Western Cape not only because of the size of the population that it deals with and the challenges of overcrowding, but also because it is a centre that largely [deals with new arrivals]… and those who have served sentences and are about to return home,” he said.

Deputy Minister Makwetla said they would like to do more with the correctional facility’s food processing centre.

“We are very interested in looking at the capacity of in-house production by our correctional centres. My observation is that [Pollsmoor has] a very special facility that other centres do not have … When vegetables arrive here, they are cleaned and prepared for cooking.

“… It is on a very small scale and does not look like it is coping with what is coming in. These are some of the things … we said in our budget are a priority,” he said.