Ex-IDC detainee: $M menu exaggerated

A report by a Joint Select Committee on Human Rights said detainees at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC), Aripo, were fed three times a day with a varied menu which included lamb, minced chicken, fish, turkey and sauteed vegetables.

But a former detainee (name given) said the food was sub-standard "at best."

The State spent over $10 million between 2016 and 2018 feeding the detainees.

The report and its details of the menus were not consistent with previous reports from detainees about their poor living conditions and diet.

The anonymous detainee said, "We would sometimes get chicken, but we never got lamb or turkey. Sometimes we got soup without any meat, and that was about it."

This was a far cry from what inmates receive in TT's prisons. A prison officer, who spoke to the Newsday anonymously said breakfast and dinner in prisons were usually the same every day, with some variation.

"For breakfast they will get bread with cheese, or sausage, or eggs, with cocoa to drink. That is what they usually get for dinner, too.

"For lunch it is rice with some kind of peas and chicken, sometimes fish."

The food served in the IDC is better than that in the prisons, the officer said, because the IDC food was catered.

"I can't say if they get lamb and turkey, but I know they get whatever the caterers have.

"I know some of the detainees who are held for committing a crime and brought to the prison complain about the food, because they say they get baked chicken at the IDC, and they can't handle the prison diet."