THE Department of Correctional Services is to spend almost R480-million on security fences, CCTV surveillance cameras and detection systems for 27 prisons.

At the same time, the department that runs the country's jails is also planning to build six new correctional facilities in Limpopo, North West, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

But the government has not yet established how much would be spent on the new facilities, but the state is likely to fork out hundreds of millions of rands.

Tabling her spending priorities for the next 12 months in the National Assembly yesterday, Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula also announced she had appointed advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza to lead a task team that would investigate her department's implementation of employment equity legislation in Western Cape.

The probe will be limited to Western Cape.

Mapisa-Nqakula, who said her department was still finalising the cost of building the six new facilities with the national Treasury and Public Works, said the proposed facilities were crucial to her efforts to reduce overcrowding in jails.

Correctional Services national commissioner Tom Moyane said the Independent Development Trust (IDT), an entity of the Public Works Department, would oversee the procurement of new fencing and CCTV cameras at the 27 prisons.

"The contract for the 27 facilities is run by IDT ... the contract value is around R480-million. It has been awarded to a company called South African Gate and Fence," he said.

Mapisa-Nqakula said the procurement of the electric fencing and installation of CCTV cameras around prisons was part of her technological security reforms.

"We are also in the process for the procurement of a service provider for the upgrading, maintenance and management of the existing access control system for the department."

Mapisa-Nqakula said Ntsebeza's task team would investigate the legitimacy of her policies.

A group of coloured officials in the Western Cape branch of Correctional Services earlier this year threatened to take the department to court after they were overlooked for promotions in favour of their African colleagues.

The group argued that Mapisa-Nqakula's Western Cape region, where coloured people are the majority population, should have applied provincial demographics instead of national statistics.

However, the correctional services minister refused to be drawn into discussing the issue, saying it was only wise to wait for the outcome of Ntsebeza's investigation.

"It's a process we have just started, but we hope that at least in three months the report should be placed before the minister."