The World Food Organisation (WFO) has donated a mobile storage facility to the Divundu Correctional Facility in Kavango East.
The correctional facility has been without a proper harvest storage facility for the past 27 years.
The Divundu Correctional Facility is one of the Namibia Correctional Service's largest crop-producing farms.
Here, inmates get to polish up their agricultural skills as part of their rehabilitation and integration. But for close to three decades, the facility has lost large amounts of produce due to a lack of an appropriate storage facility.
That was until the World Food Organisation donated a N$200,000 mobile storage unit to the facility, with a capacity of 450 metric tonnes.
The Commissioner General of the Namibian Correctional Service, Raphael Hamunyela, says the facility will go a long way in ensuring safe storage of harvests.
"The lack of silos to store our produce has been a persistent issue since the establishment of the Divundu Correctional Facility on 29 September 1996 leading to various difficulties in maintaining the quality and safety of our maize and wheat grains. The current practice of storing this grain in rooms has made them susceptible to infestations and other detrimental factors. Although the storage we received today is not siloed, we believe that it will add value to the way we store and preserve our agricultural produce."
The unit will store maize and wheat grains, which will then undergo processing to produce maize meal, bread flowers, and bread.
The World Food Programme's Country Director and Representative to Namibia, Dr. George Fedha, says the storage unit is not the most ideal, but it should be helpful under the current circumstances.
"The mobile storage facility is not the perfect facility, especially in a country like Namibia, but it is something to start off. It's something that's actually needed to ensure that we put practice into saving the food we grow and produce."
Products from the Divundu Correctional Facility will be distributed to correctional institutions countrywide and to selected police stations.