IT WAS embarrassing to read in Sowetan on December 17 the article "Prison Bosses probed after jailbreak".

We have amplified the call that private prisons in the country are a waste of taxpayers' money. Company bosses get obese at the expense of the working class.

Two dangerous prisoners is not child's play.

It is shameful not to have detected the escape as we are made to believe that private prison security systems surpass public prisons in which imperatives are not attached in terms of resource allocation.

We are content that Sinthumule-Kutama and other such prisons purely promote private accumulation and nothing else.

Key questions are, who is liable if the two escapees harm anyone, why do we still maintain these prisons when our experiences prove that cost saving is actually an attempt to erode the labour rights of workers in South Africa and other parts of the world? Perhaps the escape presumably might be due to operational reasons of staff shortages?

We want to argue that we need to do away with private prisons and to foster an all resource public prison model that will centre its programmes to enhance rural development through the engagement of prisoners to build rural infrastructure.

We must take what happened at Sinthumule-Kutama seriously and arrest the two lunatics and make our people safe from any threat. It is imperative for the Zuma administration to deal with crime as a key priority and to enhance service delivery to all the citizens of this country.

Mampane Norman, national communication officer, Popcru