Prison Authorities Hold Woman at Remera Over Tender Row

Chantal Mushambokazi, a businesswoman who won a tender last year to run the Remera prison canteen located in Kimironko, here in Kigali was this Friday taken hostage in the prison director’s office due to a contract dispute.

In July last year, Mushambokazi won a renewable contract that ran until February 2011. Mushambokazi’s family told Contact FM that she honoured this contract but had written to the prison management asking for the contract to be renewed.

They didn’t respond. She had also asked for the contract to be reviewed because of very high market prices that no longer made the business profitable. Still they didn’t respond. As a result she recently wrote to Remera prison authorities asking them to terminate the contract and on Wednesday she stopped work all together. 

It is in this respect that Contact FM visited Remera prison to find out the real picture. We were stopped at the gate and told to obtain a letter from the Director General of the National Prison Services. In the meantime we talked to Mushambokazi on the phone who told us she was coming out of prison to talk to us. But prison authorities prevented her from leaving prison premises and confiscated her phone as well.

Our efforts to speak to Remera prison director, Uwera Gakwaya Teddy to establish the reason for Mushambokazi’s ordeal and the contract situation were futile as she refused to pick our reported calls.