SOME police officers and civil servants are said to be a bit on edge.

Thousands of them must submit — for the first time — detailed declarations of their financial assets to the newly formed Corruption Commission.

The declarations are due at the end of the month and, thereafter, must be filed annually at the end of March.

However, sources say that as the Commission’s deadline draws nearer, many government employees are developing a bad case of the jitters.

It is hard to find cops or civil servants who will talk openly about the declarations.

But Chester Orr, the former Supreme Court Justice who chairs the Corruption Commission, admitted that he has heard rumours that many civil servants and cops are uneasy about having to file the declarations.

Every member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) as well as public servants, who earn $2 million or more annually, are required to submit declarations to the Commission, formed to combat corruption. Their spouses too must declare their financial assets.

But Orr suggested that the uneasiness among some government workers was not born out of fear that the Commission will unearth anything untoward.

Rather, he said they are “worried about maintaining their confidentiality and privacy”.

David Gray, the commission’s secretary-manager, added that “some of them have other (legitimate) businesses that only they know about, or only their family knows about.”

Orr, however, stressed that the commission was looking only for evidence of illegal enrichment: cases where, for example, the lifestyle of a public servant or cop far exceeds his lifestyle, thanks to bribery and other illegal activities.

“The information that’s filed is confidential; it would be a criminal offense to divulge it,” he said flatly.

Orr said this includes, for example, information about public servants or cops working extra jobs — but who are not declaring their income.

Orr and Gray said they are still uncertain how much work the commission will have, or how much staff it may have to add when the declarations start pouring in. In such instances, he said staff additions could include temporary and additional full-time employees.

Currently, the commission operates with 11 staff members, including clerical workers and those with backgrounds in accounting and administration.

Just how rampant is corruption in Jamaica? It depends on who you talk to.

Last year, international corruption watchdog, Transparency International, gave Jamaica a mid-level corruption rating on its Corruption Perception Index.

The index is based on a poll that measures the perceptions of business people, as well as those of analysts inside and outside countries being surveyed.

Jamaica got a four on an index in which 10 represented highly clean and 0 indicated highly corrupt. Jamaica’s score, which inched forward from the 3.8 it got in 2001, placed the island at 45 among the 102 countries surveyed. Brazil, Bulgaria, Peru and Poland share Jamaica’s ranking.

Among Caribbean countries surveyed, Trinidad and Tobago scored 4.9, Dominican Republic 3.5 and Haiti 2.2.

Finland was ruled the most cleanly-run country with a score of 9.7 followed by Denmark and New Zealand which both scored 9.5. The United States scored 7.7, while Bangladesh was at the bottom of the corruption index, just ahead of Nigeria, in respect to corruption.