Harare - Prison authorities in Zimbabwe say they will hire out inmates as labourers on farms resettled under the country's land reform programme, a state newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Sunday Mail quoted a prison official as saying the scheme would help inmates to learn new skills, as well as helping the country's farmers overcome labour shortages.
"We felt as part of the rehabilitation process, the prisoners should not be seen as criminals when they perform duties on the farms," the paper quoted Washington Chimboza, the deputy commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Service as saying.
"We want our prisoners to start from planting to weeding and harvesting of a particular crop so that when they are released they can venture into farming."
Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform programme four years ago, which saw the seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to new black farmers.
However, the new farmers have sometimes faced problems including lack of inputs, skills and labour.
Chimboza said that of the country's 22,500 prisoners, many of them were not high-risk criminals and so they were not likely to try and escape if employed as farm labourers.
Twenty new farmers have already used prison labour, the report said.
Under the scheme the prisoners also earn the stipulated farm workers' wage of ZIM$3 000 (R35) per day.
An official with the Zimbabwe Association of Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation was quoted as saying the scheme was not likely to undermine the rights of prisoners.