Government is guilty of "bureaucratic bungling" over the Parole Board Act, says the Opposition United Bermuda Party (UBP).

Patricia Gordon-Pamplin, the Opposition's spokesperson for Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety, yesterday described as "scandalous" the fact that some prison inmates were spending more time than necessary because of a delay in getting the new parole board up and running.

As reported in The Royal Gazette yesterday, the parole board has not yet heard any parole applications despite the fact that the operative date for the legislation that created it passed three months ago.

Government has said that arrangements to train the members of the board took longer than anticipated.

Parole applications used to be heard by the Treatment of Offenders Board - but as of October, it lost its legislative mandate to perform that role.

"One would have thought that the intelligent thing for the Government to do was to ensure that a system was in place to enable inmates to be processed on a timely basis," said Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin in a faxed statement to The Royal Gazette.

"All legislation has attached to it an effective date, and if the Government could not meet its target given the special training requirements, it could easily have delayed the implementation of the legislation."

She added: "It is scandalous for anyone to spend any more time incarcerated than they have to. It is time that the Government ceases to play politics with people's lives. They shouldn't try to appear to be saviours, then give a man false hope of release because of some bureaucratic bungling.

"It is a typical example of a Government that implements legislation that is ill-thought out. It all sounds good on paper, but they have failed to grasp the criteria by which their own programmes ought to work. People's lives are being affected, and it's inexcusable."

Permanent Secretary for the Public Safety Ministry, Robert Horton, said this week that the board should be up and running next month.

He could not say how many inmates had been affected by the delay.