Anywar earns a living from skills learnt in prison

Skill. Babylon Anywar repairs a motorcycle at his workshop in Kitgum Town recently. PHOTOS BY ROLAND D. NASASIRA

What you need to know:

Life after prison. When the gates of freedom were opened unto Anywar on October 17, 2017, he looked no further than applying the knowledge and skills he acquired from prison. He set up a motorcycle garage in front of his uncle’s spare part shop in Kitgum Town, writes Roland D. Nasasira.

On December 12, 2013, 26-year-old Babylon Anywar was arrested by police for causing an accident. He had knocked down a child while riding a motorcycle. When he was arraigned before court after spending one year on remand, he was convicted on December 17, 2014, to serve a three-year sentence at Kitgum Central Prison. The child he knocked has since then remained mentally challenged.

In his last year of confinement in 2016, he learnt of an organisation that was training youth inmates on skills development and entrepreneurship to help them start and build a meaningful life once released from prison.
“Everyone who was left with a year was asked what they were interested in doing as a source of income after release and I chose mechanics. I had little knowledge about mechanics, but the skills training helped me improve and acquire more knowledge,” Anywar recalls.

When the gates of freedom were opened unto Anywar on October 17, 2017, he looked no further than applying the knowledge and skills he acquired from the training into practice. He was supported by Advance Afrika with a toolbox that contained mechanics tools such as a set of spanners, pliers, among other items.

He set up a motorcycle garage at East Ward A in Kitgum Town in northern Uganda in front of his uncle’s motorcycle spare part shop.

Trainer
At the workshop, he also trains other youth to repair motorcycles. He is also a farmer at Palabek Gem Village where he hails from.
“I started training other youth in February 2018 and each one of them paid me Shs150,000 for a six-month training. I have retained some of them depending on their behaviour and attitude towards work,” Anywar says.
“When training other youth, I caution them about actions that can lead them to prison. I understood that when you are imprisoned, your life changes for the worse. Everything in life comes to a standstill. It becomes hard to begin something for yourself once released because the community already has a different perception and attitude towards you. This is something I experienced,” he adds, concluding that he also repairs motorcycles of prison officers who locked him up.

Anywar is one of the 1,195 young ex-inmates who received skills and entrepreneurship training as inmates from 28 prison units since 2016 under the Economic Empowerment and Social Reintegration of youth ex-prisoners in Acholi and Lango sub-regions.

The project is supported by European Union and Caritas Switzerland in partnership with Uganda Prison Services (UPS).
The project aims at curbing youth unemployment, rehabilitation and reintegration of inmates to help them develop skills to ease re-entry into society, among others.

Ronald Rwakangi, the country director of Advance Afrika, says just like majority of Uganda’s population are youth, most of the people in prison are also youth.
“When you look at the Uganda prison system, more than 70 per cent of inmates are youth. Most of them are between 20 and 30 and this is the bracket where crime is at its peak. We train them about business and skills development and when they are released, we support them with small capital to start businesses of their own to avoid reoffending,” Rwankangi says.

Adams Hasiyo, the social welfare and rehabilitation officer of Uganda Prison Services, says reintegration of ex-inmates will continue happening even when the Economic Empowerment and Social Reintegration of youth ex-prisoners in Acholi and Lango sub-regions ends.

On reoffenders
Much as there is a re-offence rate of 22 per cent among ex-inmates in Uganda, Hasiyo says it is one of the lowest rates in the world compared to countries such as the US with more than 56 per cent and South Africa with more than 45 per cent.
“We are introducing programmes of entrepreneurship training and skills development to bring down the re-offence percentage to one per cent. We have the belief that people can change much as there are those who are so into criminality,” he concludes, adding that they are currently challenged by insufficient resources.