Customs warns leakers will be punished after poison air report revealed to public

Veteran trade unionist St Patrice Ennis has dismissed as “nonsense” an internal memo sent to staff of the Jamaica Customs Agency (JCA) that warned against breaching the Official Secrets Act of 1911, following the leak of an air quality assessment report that found that the environment there was harmful.

Ennis, the president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, told The Gleaner yesterday that state agencies often misuse the act in attempts to silence staff who speak out.

“It’s matters like these that point to how people focus on the wrong things. What should be of import to the head of Customs and those who are concerned about the Secret Act is whether persons are working in a suitable environment and their health and welfare are taken care of and not whether persons know the truth,” Ennis said.

Commissioner of Customs Velma Ricketts Walker on Wednesday told JCA employees that they have a “duty to not disclose, orally or in writing, any official document or information obtained as a result of their position as a government employee” according to Section 2 of the Act and Section 4A of the Customs Act.

“Team members should also be guided by staff orders 4.4 and 4.5 of the Revised Staff Orders for the Public Service 2004 concerning public employees, the media, and confidentiality,” Ricketts Walker said in the memo.

She said failure to adhere to these provisions may constitute a criminal offence and may result in disciplinary action with a view to dismissal.

“Contraventions will be investigated, and any officer of the agency who is found in breach of duty of confidentially will be penalised to the full extent of the law,” she said.

The warning comes days after The Gleaner reported that the assessment, which was carried out between September and December last year, found that several departments at Myers Wharf are the hosts of noxious fumes.

These include nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, fine particulate matter, mould, bacteria and fungi.

CORRECT PROBLEM NOT PUNISH WHIsTLEBLOWER

Ennis said the agency’s focus should be on correcting the air quality at its head office instead of on “trying to conceal information from the person who it affects and also to look for somebody to punish”.

Referencing a similar incident that, he said, occurred with the National Public Health Laboratory, when the incinerator broke down, Ennis claimed that instead of rectifying the problem, an investigation commenced to find the person who had “leaked” the information to the media to punish them.

“These are some of the difficulties we are having with the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Act) being passed and put into legislation because the respective entities are not ready, and the upper echelons of those systems and public bodies are not where it’s supposed to be, which is to correct the problem,” Ennis said, noting similar issues that occurred at Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, St James.

“The same kind of measures is being adopted wherein instead of focusing on the problem, they are trying to see who leaked the information. They embarked upon a witch hunt, a lot of denial, never heard of it before, and so on. Again, we see this too often, and this practice and this culture must stop,” said Ennis.

He said state agencies are “misinterpreting” what the Secrets Act is about and the information that must be concealed.

“It is not about this. This is about proper work environment for workers, and I think when there is transparency, everybody benefits as a result of that. That which they are doing is really just nonsense and points to the deficiency in terms of management by some of these person who are at the helm of public bodies,” said Ennis.

More than a decade ago, in 2011, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding said he wanted to see the act removed from the law books, noting that such legislation had no place in an independent country.

“This has no place, and if next year we’re going to be celebrating 50 years of independence, then I would like to say bye-bye to this before we celebrate that 50,” he said then.

He was contributing to debate on the Protected Disclosures Act in the House of Representatives when he made the comment.

The Official Secrets Act prohibits public servants from revealing certain information that would affect areas such as national security.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com