Gov’t workers agonise over Special Prosecutor Act

Inside Parliament

BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Sunday Observer senior reporter dunkleya@jamaicobserver.com

Sunday, February 27, 2011

THE passage of the Corruption Prevention (Special Prosecutor) Act has struck fear in the hearts of public servants with some warning that the tight controls it requires could increase an already burdensome bureaucracy and slow down the work of government.

"I was at the Permanent Secretaries Board Meeting this week and we were there almost agonising," said Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Reginald Budhan at a meeting of the Economy and Production Committee of Parliament at Gordon House on Thursday.

"You have a Special Prosecutor Bill coming in place. Tell me something, if a public servant is trying to facilitate, but it is perceived incorrectly as corruption and you crucify that public servant, what do you think will happen to the rest of the public servants?" he queried.

"Everybody will be afraid and everybody will say 'I will err on the side of caution', (so) the system tightens up and becomes exceedingly bureaucratic," he continued

The Bill establishing the Office of the Special Prosecutor, which will monitor statutory declarations from public officials and prosecute those who engage in corrupt conduct, was recently passed by both Houses of Parliament and is now awaiting the signature of the Governor General before being gazetted and enacted. The Corruption Prevention (Special Prosecutor) Act will repeal the 2001 Corruption (Prevention) Act and the 1973 Parliament (Integrity of Members) Act.

In making a plea for "simpler systems and simpler procedures" Budhan said the approvals process, which has landed many public servants in hot water, should be simplified.

"Sometimes minor breaches are blown out of proportion and become problems, and this is my humble view, people are going to want to follow the letter of the law. And I can tell you that many times, in my own experience, you want to facilitate a matter which is against the letter of the law and when you try to move it up the ladder for approval, it takes a very long time," he told the Committee.

"In my view, we should probably have some kind of entity, almost like a tribunal, whereby if you have a decision to make but it is against the rules, you quickly make a presentation to that body and they listen to your argument and are able to make a decision right there, and then you can move on."

"In that case, no Auditor General or Contractor General would say you have breached (policy). Maybe that is something you can look at, because I can tell you going right up the ladder, nobody (at an official level) wants to know that they (civil servants) override the system," Budhan said further.

"Simple systems are where people are willing to take risks. You take your risks, you get the beating and you move on and you don't try to crucify people because of that. It's a risky environment, the future is uncertain," he added.

However, Opposition Committee Member Fitz Jackson expressed some amount of discomfort with this stance.

"Mr Budhan let me beg of you, don't use that as an avenue for doing anything. If there are exigencies in a particular circumstance that does not allow them (civil servants) to go through the normal procedure, somebody has to take responsibility for the decision to do that (otherwise) and once it is properly documented and your judgement is plausible, you are provided with the basis on which to do it," Jackson argued.

"I have seen where we lose a lot because people fail to act, because of fear of what might happen, so that is where my concern is when I hear you make that utterance. So I don't want any permanent secretary to believe that because there is the prospect of prosecution it is an excuse or an 'out' not to be innovative or to exercise their own authority," he pointed out further.

But government member Dr St Aubyn Bartlett said any slackening of the rules left the system wide open to rampant corruption for which Jamaica has gained notoriety.

"We must be very careful when we seek to critique measures to ensure that the "runnings" mentality in Jamaica is changed. For too long we have been a society where "runnings" seems to be how Jamaica operates. We have to recognise that the reason we have had notoriety as being one of the corrupt most countries of the world is because we have allowed too much "runnings" to go on," Bartlett said.

"If there are compelling reasons for you to go outside of the rules, there ought to be some system in place to facilitate that. It cannot be that you, on your own, take unto yourself the responsibility to do that, because it would be chaotic," Committee Chair Roger Clarke noted.

Budhan however insisted that public servants were still caught between a rock and a hard place.

"The Auditor General doesn't listen to reason. He said he audits against what is written down as the rule. The Contractor General will tell you he doesn't make the rules," the Permanent Secretary said.

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Gov’t workers agonise over Special Prosecutor Act