JAMAICANS who might be interested in getting an official response from Government for 20 ongoing petitions on the Office of the Prime Minister’s (OPM) website might not, as many citizens have either shied away from or are paying little attention to matters of national importance.

The Jamaican Government has invited citizens to engage OPM with any issue they may want addressed by creating a petition, raising awareness to the petition and gathering at least 15,000 signatures in 40 days. A response from the Government is mandatory providing the petition complies with agreed standards.

Yesterday, a review of the 21 petitions on OPM’s website showed that only one has surpassed the 15,000 mark set.

The “Save Cockpit Country” petition championed by the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) launched on August 21, targeting 15,000 signatures by the September 30 deadline surpassed the required number by more than 1,000 signatures a full week before the deadline. A total of 18,963 people have signed that petition.

Of the remaining 20 petitions, only two have surpassed 1,000 signatures.

A petition, which is requesting that Government “Call the Country to a One-Day Fasting and Prayer,” has so far garnered 2,277 signatures.

It is followed by a petition to “Nationalise Jamaica’s Coastline”, which has so far acquired 1,182 signatures, while another from Portmore residents to “Prevent Any Further Increase for the Portmore Leg of the Highway to Portmore Residents” has so far garnered 944 signatures.

Other petitions on the website include a call to name former Prime Minister Edward Seaga a national hero; to amend the law to punish criminals with lethal injection or death by electric chair; term limits for all parliamentarians and modernising elections; to make bird shooting illegal in Jamaica; and to reduce Tax Office Inland Revenue and Companies Office late filing fees.

Director of communications and public affairs at OPM, Robert Morgan, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that the idea is to give the approximately “1.5 million” Jamaicans on social media who advocate through the Internet the opportunity to raise their concerns on national issues with Government.

“…This has never been done before in a Caribbean context. Initially it was 30,000 signatures over a 30-day period and now we have dropped it to 15,000 signatures over a 40-day period. [This was] based on feedback. We looked at the trends, what was taking place, and we recognised that a lot of the persons were saying maybe we should drop it a little lower so that it is easier [to achieve],” Morgan explained.

He told the Observer that the objective is not to prevent people from being able to petition but to ensure that petitions are not “frivolous”.

Morgan said over time people will come to understand the petition portal, which has been up for less than two months, when asked about the slow response to it.

“…We have to give people some time. JET has run a campaign in which they were very aggressive in pushing their petition relating to the Cockpit Country and they got a lot of people to support their petition,” he added.

“I think what a lot of persons have to start doing now is seeing the petition, that is a credible portal, that if you get the 15,000 signatures we will respond in substance to the question that you ask,” he said.