The prison officers dispute took another dramatic turn last night -- just hours after it looked as though a solution had been reached.

The Royal Gazette understands that Prison Officer Association leaders were planning to recommend that the action be called off when they meet with members later this evening.

The turnaround came following a weekend meeting with Home Affairs Minister Paula Cox, who gave assurances that six initiatives to help resolve staff shortages at Westgate would be implemented immediately.

But as of last night only one of the six promises has been put in place.

And Association chairman Lynn Hall said that, unless the remaining five demands are carried out by this evening, he will have nothing concrete to take to his members.

Ms Cox issued a series of orders to Prisons Commissioner Ed Dyer to implement the plans immediately, but has since left the Island to attend a conference in Switzerland.

Mr. Hall pointed out that, although the Minister made certain promises at an initial meeting early in the dispute, members still voted overwhelmingly to carry on with the action.

And he feared that, unless he could show that concrete steps had been taken to ease the manpower crisis at Westgate, members would have no alternative but to continue their protest.

"I need to tell my people that the Minister has done A, B and C,'' Mr. Hall said. "It's no good me saying that the Minister has promised to do A, B and C -- that's only got us this far.

"We met with the Minister on Saturday and we were guaranteed certain things and now it seems that there's someone on the administration who's trying to put a wrench in the works.

"My people were basically ready to move to end this industrial action and now I'm kind of hoping that these things get cleared up.

"I hope that this doesn't jeopardise anything positive that we can take to our members. These things will need to be done by 7 p.m. tomorrow. I have been given assurances that these things would be signed off as soon as possible -- if they are then they would go a long way to ending this action.

"We spent Saturday hammering out details to take back to our members so that they would then vote to end the action because we had achieved something tangible.

Prison deal may collapse But, unless these things are put in place by tomorrow night, then there isn't anything tangible. Again it will just be promises -- we need something to be actually done.'' Last night Prisons Commissioner Ed Dyer could not be contacted to explain why the proposals had not been carried out.

The action, in which officers are refusing to guard and escort inmates who have to leave the correctional facility to attend court, enters its seventh day today.

Police officers have been called in to carry out the duties while the strike goes on.