‘Unacceptable!’

The Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) has added its voice to the recent public debate over Transport and Telecommunications Minister Daryl Vaz’s dismissal of an auditor general’s report which found that he breached the procurement law by bypassing established procedures to acquire 200 Starlink devices.

Commenting on the issue, Bishop Garth Minott, president of the JCC, said no public official is above the law and as such, the church body found Vaz’s response to the auditor general’s findings regarding the Starlink procurement “unacceptable and inexcusable”, whether in ordinary times or during emergencies.

In his initial response, Vaz described the auditor general’s findings as “uninformed and grossly inaccurate”, but later said he accepted the report from the guardian of the country’s expenditure.

Vaz had also indicated that he would take a similar approach in future if another emergency warranted it.

“We agree that emergencies require urgency, but urgency must be exercised within lawful emergency flexibilities and with clear, if not heightened, provisions for accountability,” Minott said.

“When any official signals, ‘I would do it again’, in response to a clear breach, this places the risk not only in the single event, but sets the precedent for future actions in non-emergency contexts,” the JCC president said.

He said Jamaica must ensure that the public service remains properly empowered to act swiftly, while ministers remain within their constitutional and statutory roles, so that life-saving action does not require unlawful shortcuts.

The church body said it was also concerned about reports of unused Starlink devices and apparent gaps between acquisition and effective deployment.

“We note the disconcerting audit report that a significant number of devices were in storage some weeks after their acquisition and that verification and recording were incomplete,” Minott added, noting that this raised serious questions regarding the realisation of value for money, operational readiness, and moral stewardship, especially when communities, schools, and essential services needed connectivity after Hurricane Melissa.

Minott argued that as part of disaster response, procurement is not complete when items are paid for; it is finalised when assets are tracked, deployed, and demonstrably serving the public purpose.

“Where assets are idle, unrecorded, or unverified, the public’s trust is weakened and the most vulnerable may bear the cost,” he contended.

The auditor general had reported that of the 200 Starlink devices delivered to the Office of the Commissioner of Police, only 120 were distributed to 17 entities, while the remaining 80 were on site and not in use on January 6, 2026, when a site inspection was done.

The council also described as a serious governance failure the auditor general’s finding that the National Disaster Fund Committee was non-functional for an extended period, and that appointments were not renewed after the prior term expired.

According to Minott, statutory committees are not optional accessories, but part of the nation’s accountability architecture.

The JCC is urging the Government to urgently reconstitute all required committees on time and publish appointments and terms; ensure written minutes and documentary evidence of consultations are maintained and retrievable; and modernise inventory and asset management, so emergency procurement is matched by real-time tracking and reconciliation, not paper-first processes that collapse under crisis pressure.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com