A possible face-off between the Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA) and the Tax Administration Directorate over the decision to send commissioner of customs Hector Jones on 75 days vacation leave, with effect from September 25, has been averted.

President of the union, Wayne Jones, told the Observer yesterday afternoon that “an amicable solution was being arrived at”.

The JCSA president said since the matter was made public, there had been some interventions on the part of the tax directorate, which appeared promising.

“Some responses have come and it seems quite promising to find an amicable resolution to the problem and there have been some efforts of the administration to clarify any difficulties … and we are reasonably satisfied that we are finding a resolution,” Jones told the Observer.

The JCSA, in a release issued to the media yesterday morning, said it would be challenging the decision to force the commissioner of customs to take leave, and called the action “sudden and unexplained”.

The association added that the action was being “viewed by the union as a punitive one without the requisite due process”. It added that the union was even more suspicious with the attempt by the administration to link its action with an audit query issued for a period before Jones became commissioner.

But, despite Jones’ assurance that an amicable solution was being worked out concerning the customs boss, he said the union was not yet privy to the reason for the tax directorate’s decision to have the commissioner sent on 75 days leave. He speculated that it had to do with the government’s recent thrust to have public servants take their leave, rather than have it accumulate.

“.One thing we know is that throughout the public sector there has been an effort to reduce the stock of accumulated leave, particularly in the civil service. We are told now in the discussion we are having with the revenue administration that it has something to do with it somehow; so we are trying to find out if that was totally the case, or if some other issues were involved,” Jones said.

He added: “Our concern was that this move might have been a punitive move, but we are now seeing signs that suggest that it is not necessarily so, and so it is not as contentious as it could have been. We are trying to clarify what would have been the total reason for that to have happened and we haven’t arrived at that as yet, but we are confident that we will find the requisite resolution to make the issue less contentious than it could have been,” Jones said.