The General Prison Directorate (GPD) has signed a contract with three companies to provide inmates in Saudi prisons with healthy meals at a cost of SR1.179 billion for the next three years.
The National Human Rights Commission called on the authorities to follow up on these contracts to guarantee that healthy food reaches prisoners, particularly in remote areas.
Mefleh Al-Qahtani, president of the National Human Rights Commission, hoped that these contracts will raise the health standards of prisoners owing to the quality of the meals they will receive. He said that the commission would tolerate no shortcomings of the contracted companies in this regard.
“There should be real benefit to the prisoners from the value of these contracts,” he said.
He described the former subsistence services for the prisoners as satisfactory, but said that they varied from one prison to prison. “There might be problems with providing certain diet meals, especially for sick people,” he said.
The GPD said inmates in Saudi prisons are offered 14 different types of food and beverages in a single day and four government bodies supervise these meals, which are described as good and adequate.
Three firms to provide jail inmates with healthy meals
