Trevor Munroe | Enforce PBMAA, just like DRMA!

On Monday, September 27, after reading two quite different reports, one of the realities about Jamaica struck me yet again: until more of us stand up for justice and reduce levels of inequity, the sense of unfairness is going to grow into discontent, unrest and, ultimately, rejection of the system.

One report was in The Star newspaper, titled ‘A High Price For Freedom – St Thomas sisters lament unfair justice system’. The second report is on the Cabinet Office website: ‘Submission of Annual Reports of Government Entities to Cabinet as at 20 September 2021’.

In the first report, we read: “Sisters Racquel Williams and Kaydreen Nelson, who on Wednesday were both fined $200,000.00 or thirty days in jail by a St Thomas Parish Court Judge for not wearing a mask, feel they were treated unfairly by the justice system”.

Why?

“The sisters admit that they were not wearing their masks, as required under the DRMA, when they were arrested. ‘It was the day before my sister’s birthday. We had plans to go out, so we were in Morant Bay about 10:00 a.m. We went to shave our eyebrows. When we came down the stairs from the barber shop we walked right into the police. We tek off the mask ‘cause we a tek picture upstairs … we both had our masks in our hands, by time the police came out the vehicle we quickly put on the masks’.”

Williams said that as a call centre employee she is aware of the need to wear masks…she followed the rule and that her infraction is not in keeping with the way she operates.

The sisters could not come up with the fine right away, so they were taken into custody and kept at the lockup at the Morant Bay Police Station overnight. “The one night was like fifteen hours in hell, you share sleeping area with the roaches and the slippers on the ground are rat toys. We couldn’t sleep that night; we stay up the whole night a wait till morning to call our mother,” Williams said.

The Star was told that to pay the fine, the sisters’ mother had to get a loan for $270,000.00 at the bank, and the interest to pay it back over three years meant that they would end up repaying $540,000.00 – $15,000.00 a month for three years. The remainder of the funds to pay the fine they got from friends and family.

So, here we have a case where a law, the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA), was breached, the case went to court, the offenders, despite explanation, faced the consequences and were punished, presumably in accordance with the law.

MASSIVE BREACHES

The second report on the Cabinet Office’s website discloses massive breaches of law, no charges laid, and absolutely no consequences for the offenders.

The law concerned The Public Bodies Management Accountability Act (PBMAA) Section 3, Subsection 2 states: “As soon as possible after the end of each financial year, but not more than four months thereafter, the Board of a Public Body shall submit the Annual Report, including Audited Financial Statements…to the responsible Minister…to be laid on the table of the House of Representatives and of the Senate.”

The September 20, 2021 tabulation which I was reading tells us that no less than 122 boards of public entities are in breach of the PBMAA, which requires each board to report to us, the people, through the Parliament, how they spent our taxpayers’ money. In 2020-2021, over $167 billion was paid out in relation to 21,000 contracts.

Of course, thankfully, not all of the 161 boards reported on were in breach: 39 were exemplary in complying with the law. The delinquents were often in breach, not for one or two years, but like the National Works Agency, for ten years, or National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), also for ten years, and similarly, every single one of the regional health authorities.

The sisters, who breached the DRMA for a maximum of a few hours, had to face the full force and pay the high price for breaching the law. What price or consequence has any one of these 122 board chairmen faced for breaching this critical provision of the PBMAA? I stand to be corrected, but I know of no price nor consequence any chairman of a public board has had to pay for what the August 2020 circular of the Ministry of Finance correctly described as “chronic violations”.

Perhaps the PBMAA, unlike the DRMA, provides for no sanctions. No such thing! Section 25(1) states the possible penalty: “The Court may order the person concerned to pay to the Crown such pecuniary penalty not exceeding one million dollars. …”

For this penalty to be applied, the attorney general has to make an application, and the court has to be satisfied that the annual report and audited financial statements have not been submitted as required by law. Again, I stand to be corrected: I know of no attorney general who has made any such application over successive administrations, despite annual chronic violations.

No wonder survey after survey points to growing dissatisfaction with how our system operates. If we don’t trust surveys, heed the lyrics of our conscious artistes going back over 45 years.

• 1976 – Bob Marley: “Until there is no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation …mi say war.”

• 1996 – Bounty Killer: “Poor people fed up with how the system sheg up.”

• 2018 – Protoje: “Look inna Jamaica now, injustice in the place now, if what yu see nu really phase yu, then yu a the problem wi face to.”

For Jamaica’s sake, let less of us be the problem and more of us stand up for the solution. ‘Equal Rights and Justice’ for all.

Professor Trevor Munroe, CD, DPhil (Oxford), is the principal director of the National Integrity Action. Email feedback to info@niajamaica.org and columns@gleanerjm.com.