The provincial government is privatizing food services at the province’s eight correctional facilities.
A five-year contract has been awarded to Compass Group Canada, a company that is already providing food services at a number of other correctional facilities across the country.
The provincial justice ministry first started looking at the option more than a year ago.
Corrections Minister Christine Tell says contracting out food services will save about $2.5 million a year. She says the money can be reinvested in programming for the inmate population.
“We are going to take the money we save from food services and reinvest it in programs,” she says. “Reinvest it in places like White Birch in Yorkton, job skills training. We are going to expand that program, hopefully to other facilities in the province also.”
Sixty-two workers will lose their jobs as a result of the move. Tell says the workers will be offered the opportunity to re-train as correctional workers. She says a number of them have already taken up the offer.
Both the SGEU, which represents the workers, and the NDP Opposition loudly condemned and criticized the move in June of last year when the government first floated the idea.
The union says it will result in lower quality, higher costs and less accountability.
The switch over is expected to take place in November.