BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - POPULAR Mathematics teacher, chemist and former host of ZIZ television programme 'Ask Nital', who was sentenced to prison for three years for fraud on July 21, 2011, has been influential while in prison as part of a rehabilitation programme with prisoners.
According to Franklin Dorset, Superintendent of Prisons, Nital has been extremely influential in academics where he teaches English, Mathematics and Principles of Accounts to the inmates.
“We always had a programme going with the Seventh Day Adventist Church and when he came to prison he sat with me, in fact before he was convicted of any crime, he related to my children the idea and came to me and said he would volunteer his service to teach the youngsters in prison,” said Dorset.
“He gave me an idea of what they would want and gave me some names of people also, who I can get contributions from and they were willing to and actually contributed,” he said.
Dorset said the sessions have been going well but said he wished they had more spacing to accommodate more people.
“We had to make some sacrifices where we had the officers’ quarters and had to allow prisoners to use that. Nital teaches every day except Saturdays and Sundays and even during that time I’m sure he makes himself available for questions.
“We actually have another inmate doing elementary teaching because a number of youngsters in jail are unable to read and write. I’m really grateful to these inmates for doing the programme, and also to those who are participating as well,” he said.
Dorset said four months after Nital came to prison and had started teaching, they had three prisoners who were successful in sitting CXC subjects.
According to a release from Operation Future who are a part of an Outreach Programme at the prison, Collin Glasgow sat CXC in Principles of Accounts and scored a 2; Jeffrey Martin sat CXC in Principles of Accounts and scored a 3 and Patrice Matthews sat CXC in Principles of Accounts and scored a 1 and also a grade two in English A.
Nital informed Operation Future that he wished to expand the programme and asked for their support.
In recognizing the tremendous importance of this work, the release stated that Operation Future donated materials including text books, work books and scientific calculators to the prison to aid the programme.
Dorset said that he does not have the power to reduce Nital’s sentence or any inmate who may perform similar commendable duties but there are incentives called ‘special remission’.
“If there’s a project and the inmates perform well on the project I can write and request some remission time. I could give a time but it will be at the discretion of the Minister. It is really for long sentenced people,” he said.
Dorset said that Nital has already had a third of his sentenced automatically reduced and will spend a total of two years in prison.
“Once it’s over 30 days you get a third off of your sentence but the months can be added on if you don’t conform to the rules.”
