The foreign ministry has already been directed to ask its missions abroad to prepare reports on this issue so that the matter can be conveyed to the countries concerned accordingly.

A decision to this effect was taken at the 13th meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Jail Reform held at the Home Ministry's conference room yesterday, with Law Minister Moudud Ahmed in the chair.

Health Minister Dr Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Housing and Public Works Minister Mirza Abbas, Post and Telecommunications Minister Aminul Haq, Social Welfare Minister Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and State Minister for Home Luthfuzzaman Babar attended the meeting.

The meeting was told that the government has taken up schemes to construct new prisons and renovate the existing ones as the number of prisoners is three times more than the capacity of jails in the country.

Land acquisition for construction of a new jail in Keraniganj has already been completed and a Tk 393 crore project has been approved in this regard.

There are now 74,900 inmates in jails against the total capacity of 26,500.

Meanwhile, the government has taken up a Tk 142 crore project to construct a separate jail for female prisoners at Kashimpur in Gazipur.

After the meeting, the law minister told reporters that the government has taken up the jail reforms programme on humanitarian approach.

A scheme involving US dollar 1.7 million is under active consideration of the government to bring the jail activities under computer network, he said.

Lutfuzzaman Babar told reporters that video-linkage would be installed in Dhaka Central Jail to strengthen its security system.

After the installation of this system, the inmates of the jail do not need to appear in the courts physically.

He hoped that this system could be installed within one year.

The state minister said the government is also actively considering setting up a high security prison in the country.

Senior officials of the ministry, including Cabinet Secretary Dr. Saadat Hussain, were also present.