The Commission observed a large amount of food is wasted every day, especially at remand prisons, likely due to the unsatisfactory quality of the food, and also because remand prisoners are allowed to receive food from home, and a proportional reduction is not efficiently made to reduce the amount of food prepared. The inefficiency in the preparation of food therefore contributes to the waste of food supplies and resources. The Commission was informed that prisoners who cook the food usually do not possess prior culinary experience, which would inevitably impact the quality of food. Medical officers do not inspect the conditions of the kitchen as required by national legislation, and hence, a quality check of the preparation of meals is not undertaken. The lack of oversight reportedly allows room for the alleged appropriation by officers of ingredients, spices and condiments meant for prisoners, which contributes to the low quality of food. It should be noted that prisoners in many prisons reported that the quality of the food improved during the three to four-day period of the Commission’s visit. 4. Water, Sanitation and Personal Hygiene Due to the overcrowding of prisons, obsolete prison structures which were not designed for the current level of occupancy impede the access of inmates to a consistent supply of water and sanitation facilities. The ratio of prisoners to toilets and water points is extremely high, and complaints were received from virtually every prison about the insufficient quantity of water provided to them. Toilets in the prison system also do not have flushes installed and prisoners complained they are required to use their limited water supply to sluice away excrement after using the toilets. In prisons situated away from towns in rural areas, there would be no direct water line from the main supply line and water would have to be acquired from natural sources. Numerous complaints were received about the quality of water from certain prisons, particularly where it was derived from natural sources of water, and would become muddy or contaminated, or taste briny or brackish. Toilets found inside wards were not furnished with doors or cubicles and due privacy is not afforded to inmates while they use them. A common characteristic of the prison system is that, since individual cells are locked at night and there are no toilet facilities in each cell, but rather toilets for common use in the ward outside the cells, prisoners are required to relieve themselves in plastic buckets and polythene bags at night time when they cannot access toilets. These bags and buckets are then kept inside their cells for the duration of the night. Multiple inmates occupying a single cell would be required to share one bucket, and often the newest entrant in the cell would be tasked with cleaning it the next morning. As there is no budgetary allocation for the provision of toiletries , inmates are required to source necessary provisions through visiting family members, but persons who do not receive visits and foreign nationals would find it difficult to acquire these items. In such vii