MANCHESTER, Jamaica— Member of Parliament for Manchester North Western, Mikael Phillips, is calling on the Auditor General and the Integrity Commission to investigate allegations of corruption at the HEART/NSTA Trust.

During his address at the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Manchester Candidates Presentation at Hatfield Primary School on Sunday night, Phillips stated that the agency is not fulfilling its mandate.

“You still have 600,000 Jamaicans not looking for jobs because dem can’t find none or dem don’t have a skill. Yet still you have an institution like HEART, where there is nepotism where they have jobs for their friends – that is not meeting its mandate of finding and training young people. Yet still you have HEART who spends millions to put up a booth at Rebel Salute, but that is not the people who looking for HEART programme. You have the same management of HEART who book hotel rooms for millions of dollars to put on training month after month. But yet still you have students who can’t even get certificates who went to HEART from 2018,” he said.

Phillips continued, “So the time has time and we need the Auditor General, the Integrity Commission to go into HEART, because what is happening inside there will not be to the benefit of any Jamaican,” Phillips stated.

— Kasey Williams