ALTONA North Primary School’s status as a showpiece of sustainability has received a boost thanks to some convict labour.
Skilled criminals have served part of their sentences installing 25 rainwater tanks at the school as part of a Corrections Victoria program aiming to save 50 million litres of water each year.
But the school’s sustainability co-ordinator, Wally Raghdo, said parents should not be concerned about their offspring mingling with chain gangs of hardened crooks in the playground.
“They are screened thoroughly before they come and they only work at the school on weekends,” Mr Raghdo said.
He said the workers were not prisoners and had been sentenced to community based orders for relatively minor offences.
“For example, people who have been before the courts for something like speeding or drink driving offences might have specific skills, whether they’re plasterers or builders, and so those skills are put to good use in community programs like this,” Mr Raghdo said.
He said the tanks could hold 80,000 litres of water.
“We are a sustainable school accredited with Waste Wise, so this project has worked in very well with that,” Mr Raghdo said.
The offenders’ efforts have earned Werribee and Newport Community Correctional Services a community work partnership award for water-saving initiatives.
Corrections Victoria commissioner Kelvin Anderson said prisoners and offenders serving community based orders had worked on hundreds of water-saving projects throughout Victoria in the past year.
“Prisons and community correctional services offices are no different to the rest of the community when it comes to a desire to save water. Each year hundreds of projects – such as these water-saving initiatives – are carried out by prisoners and offenders around Victoria for not-for-profit community groups as reparation to the community,” Mr Anderson said.
Mr Anderson said offenders’ unpaid work enabled community organisations to undertake projects they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to manage.
