At the beginning of this month, a statement was released by Uspec, the management of Inpec, which is in charge of contracting food for prisons and temporary detention centers, in which they spoke about the expiration of the same, for the centers where the accused are at the end of July.
This declaration set off the alarms of government secretaries and mayors, as well as those in charge of these centers, who are mostly police station commanders and in some others the directors of the URIs, who do not have the resources for this purpose. From the Pereira Medium Security Penitentiary, its director Alexander Zapata said that the contractor for this city had not communicated with him and that in the event of this situation, the problem would be terrible.
The solution appeared
Mayor Ramos, a member of Fedemunicipios, clarified that although they were informed that as of August 1, this responsibility would fall on the shoulders of the mayors, he said: “in the municipalities we do not have these resources for this term; due to ignorance of the sentence or lack of budget, our proposal is that the Uspec, which does have the capital insured until December, continue with the food, the rulers of the day commit to leave assigned for the 2024 term, the necessary resources to cover said sentence”.
Then the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General’s Office and the Ombudsman’s Office reached an agreement so that the aforementioned Unit guarantees that the supply of food to persons deprived of their liberty who remain in transitional centers will not be suspended. Thus, the Uspec will extend the current food contract until October 31, 2023 and an expedited bill will be processed that is aimed only at granting provisional jurisdiction to the Uspec, so that it continues to provide the food service. The transitory competition will be set until June 30, 2024.
With the entry into force of the Law of Guarantees, the territorial entities cannot assume this competence, for this reason the measure is transitory, so that traumatisms are not generated for persons deprived of their liberty and their families.