By Robert Hummy
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's government offered prison warders more money, better uniforms and improved living conditions on Monday after a strike threatened to paralyse jails and raised fears of mass break outs.
Guards have been manning prison gates and watchtowers since the industrial action began on Friday, but have refused to work inside prisons and threatened to release dangerous criminals if their demands were not met.
Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, who was heckled over the weekend when he tried to speak to the warders, said on Monday that each warder would receive an additional payment of 5,000 shillings monthly in the form of an allowance.
"The Vice President also announced other steps to include the issuance of official uniform to all officers as well as ensuring that all prisons staff are provided with decent accommodation," a statement by his office said.
The striking warders are protesting against squalid living quarters and poor salaries. They accuse the government of overlooking them in prison reforms instituted by President Mwai Kibaki's government in 2003.
It was not clear if the strike would be called off after the government offer.
Earlier on Monday, nine senior prison officials were charged with inciting thousands of warders to strike.
"Living standards of inmates are better than those of officers. They have TV, they are being well fed," one unidentified warder said at Nairobi's Kamiti Prison.
Some warders live in crumbling mud huts, with only plastic sheets as roofing. In Kamiti, Kenya's biggest maximum security jail, some warders are crammed into dormitories with their families, where they use torn sheets for privacy.
The warders have also demanded a one-off payment of about $160, which was paid to police officers as a risk allowance during post-election violence that began in late December and left 1,200 dead and about 300,000 displaced.
Another warder said they wanted to tell the president and Prime Minister Raila Odinga about corruption in the service.
He said guards were forced to buy their own uniforms with their monthly wage of 14,000 shillings, yet money for uniforms was allocated in the government budget each year.
Many of the warders wear tattered, faded uniforms, some with no boots or plastic slippers.
Kenya's prison reforms were spearheaded by former Vice President Moody Awori and improved conditions in the country's overcrowded prisons, giving inmates access to better food and luxuries such as television. The reforms were so popular that inmates took to calling Awori "Uncle Moody".
