KINGSTON, Jamaica— Maria Carla Gullotta, the executive director of human rights group Stand up for Jamaica (SUFJ), has joined calls for the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Peter Bunting to resign as Opposition senator amid recent revelations that he is one of two former national security ministers who granted firearm permits to people convicted of serious criminal offences.

The Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Robert Montague, was the other person named in an Integrity Commission report, as having given people of questionable character the privilege to legally possess and carry firearms.

READ: Montague resigns

“Minister Robert Montague tendered his resignation and we now await for the Opposition, Senator Peter Bunting, to do the same. Investigations by MOCA and FID are ongoing and we welcome such a decision,” Gullotta said in a written statement Sunday.

She said the SUFJ is demanding changes to make the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) into a Parliamentary body, as “Integrity is the backbone of our nation to guarantee citizens’ rights”. Gullotta stressed that “It is hard to believe in the government’s commitment to an urgent battle affecting all Jamaicans while its members are allegedly blatantly issuing gun permits to criminals”.

Bunting and Montague have denied wrongdoing saying they were guided by the FLA review board.

In defending Bunting, the PNP in a statement expressed that it is of the view that nothing in the Integrity Commission report indicated that Bunting’s decisions were flawed or improper.

Amid the Integrity Commission’s report on alleged acts of impropriety involving former national security minister Peter Bunting, the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) is of the view that nothing revealed in the 245-page special investigation has indicated his decisions being “flawed or improper”. The statement said the decisions were within his ministerial authority.