On the Corner with EPOC | South St Andrew resident wants persons grilled by House before taking public office
Published:Sunday | October 20, 2019 | 12:00 AMPaul Clarke - Gleaner Writer
Government appointees to nationally important positions must be subjected to questions about integrity by a committee of Parliament before they are confirmed in the post, in order to kick-start the process of detachment from corrupt practices.
That was the consensus of the residents of Ninth Street, Trench Town, who used last week’s Gleaner On The Corner with the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC) forum to outline how disgusted they are with corruption.
“I want these persons grilled before a committee of Parliament before confirmation in any post. Because when we appoint people to serve, those people should have the trust of the country,” said Mark Osbourne, a resident.
Osbourne said a person who is placed in high office, whether as a member of parliament, a senator or any other position, or board member in the public sector has to be assessed constantly for trustworthiness.
He said he believed that many of the agencies established to give oversight are failing because the people charged with leading are too political and, therefore, unable to reasonably do the job to make corruption, which is defined as the abuse of public office for private gain, a non-factor in the Jamaican society.
“I believe that it gets in the way, and it forces those people to be ineffective in their duties. We have to be serious as it relates to corruption and the people we appoint or elect to serve,” Osbourne told EPOC Chairman Keith Duncan and Mark Golding, the member of parliament for South St Andrew, the constituency in which the forum took place.
Jamaica is losing an estimated five per cent of its gross domestic product each year to corruption.
Earlier in the year, Metry Seaga, then president of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said Jamaica had lost some US$738 million due to corrupt practices.
Duncan, who also serves as president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), said he was happy that corruption is now part of daily discussions, and that for once it is not being swept under the carpet.
“I am so happy that it is now a national dialogue and debate and people are being charged.
“The fact is that Jamaicans are very much tired of it. We therefore need to make sure that the institutions that we put in place, such as the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA), the Financial Investigations Division (FID) and the Integrity Commission that they work for us,” he said.
Duncan told the residents that those agencies have been put in place by both political parties to protect them.
DITCH CORRUPTION
He said further that Jamaica can no longer afford to skirt the issues, demanding that citizens use the tools available to them to force the Government, as well as private sector players to ditch corrupt practices in favour of a trustworthy and decent system.
“We need to strengthen these institutions to make sure they work for us and protect our tax dollars. Corruption is a national problem; it exists not only in Government, but between Government and the private sector because they are complicit partners if it exists like that,” said Duncan.
“I sense that Jamaicans are absolutely at the point where they are fed up with corruption and with the unending waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” he added.
Duncan reasoned that it was vitally important that those institutions that give oversight be politically independent.
He said that it is important to move to minimise both the perception, as well as the practice of corruption, so that Jamaica can have a more equitable and fair society for all.