Bhopal: Pursuant to an MoU inked on Thursday, the Gujarat-headquartered Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU) will train Madhya Pradesh prison department personnel on how to improve mental health of distressed prisoners lodged in jails of the central state.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was inked between the Madhya Pradesh Jail Department and the RRU, Gandhinagar, a senior official said in Bhopal.
Under the agreement, officers/employees selected by the Jail Department will be sent to the RRU to attend the Master Trainer Course, Madhya Pradesh Director General of Prisons and Correctional Services Varun Kapoor told reporters at the MoU signing.
After completing the training, these officers/employees will in turn train other Jail Department personnel as Master Trainers, he said.
After this initiative, the Jail Department's first Psychosocial Counselling Centre will be established in the Central Jail, Bhopal, and such facilities will subsequently come up in other prisons too.
Besides Kapoor, Special Director General G Akheto Sema, other senior officers of the Prison Department and Shubham Jain from RRU were present at the MoU signing.
Kapoor is making special efforts to improve the mental health of mentally ill and distressed prisoners lodged in MP's jails. As part of his efforts, he studied the Psychosocial Counselling Scheme run by the RRU, which functions under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
Following this, subject matter experts from RRU were invited to the Regional Institute of Prison Management and Research, Bhopal, and a seven-day training programme was organised from July 6 to July 12, he informed.
A total of 28 officers/employees from various prisons across the state, including nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, head guards, and guards, underwent training.
The trained personnel visited prisons to counsel mentally distressed prisoners and their feedback showed positive results, leading to the inking of the MoU for implementing the project at a wider scale, officials said.
This report was published from a wire feed. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.