Convicts pass school exams

MATARAM, West Nusa Tenggara: Twenty-nine inmates of the Mataram Correctional Institution recently passed their examinations to obtain the equivalent of a primary school diploma.

"These convicts were illiterate when they came here," I Wayan Puspa of the local justice office was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying.

The local education office has been working with the correctional institution to provide inmates with a crash course program, called the "A Packet", to study for the exams.

The institution has passed a total of 369 convicts since the course was introduced in 1989. Many of them who have since been released are earning their living by trading, making handicraft products or raising hens, Puspa said. (emb)