Politicians urged to face up to ‘big issue’ of trust

Opposition legislator Senator Sophia Frazer-Binns has urged parliamentarians to set aside their political stripes and confront the “big issue” of low trust in relation to whether information Jamaicans provide to the Government could be abused or misused.

“For one moment I want us to just put our colours aside and listen to the bigger issue because we can’t afford as legislators and policymakers to let that point be lost on us because it is critical,” she declared in the Senate on Friday.

Frazer-Binns was participating in a debate on the National Identification and Registration (NIDS) Regulations, 2024.

“If we want the success of NIDS or any other legislation that is going to require people giving their information, then we have to create a framework where people feel their information is protected,” she said.

Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with oversight for Skills, Digital Transformation and Information, Dr Dana Morris Dixon, piloted the passage of the NIDS regulations yesterday.

She said the NIDS was a very robust system that has been created with checks and balances and will secure the interest of Jamaicans.

The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) will assume the administration of the civil registration system locally and replace the Registrar General’s Department. The NIRA will also preside over the rollout of the NIDS.

Low trust country

Commenting on the issue of trust, Morris Dixon conceded that “we live in a low trust country” and that increased public education would be carried out on the NIDS.

In a related matter, Opposition Senator Lambert Brown called on lawmakers to respect the provisions in the Data Protection Act that deals with information deemed private.

Brown took aim at Cabinet Minister Daryl Vaz, castigating him for recent comments that “nothing is secret or private” as concerns were raised as to whether his disclosure of Opposition Leader Mark Golding’s passport and citizenship information amounted to a breach of data privacy.

“No public figure, whether in Jamaica or the world, should ever think that anything they have can be hidden. You start on the premise that anything you’re involved in or associated with can be found,” Vaz, the minister of science, energy, telecommunications and transport, told The Gleaner.

Brown charged that the Government should distance itself from the remarks made by Vaz.

“If the Government’s position is that nothing is secret and private anymore, then you can’t get my support on NIDS,” he declared. “You need to denounce that position and an apology must be made to the Jamaican people,” he added.

Brown told Morris Dixon that the information “we are seeking from the public must be held in confidence, must be secret, must be private”.

He said under the Data Protection law it is an offence to publish a person’s private information.

“When I say there is public education, the minister would have known that he would have been committing an offence wherever he got it from,” Brown said.

In his contribution to the debate, Government Senator Ransford Braham sought to allay the fears of some religious groups who have cast doubt on how their private information would be used under the NIDS.

Braham noted that a senior member of the clergy has been appointed to chair the NIRA.

He reasoned that having a representative from the church would assure persons of the Christian faith and others that no “disadvantage will be taken of those practising Christians”.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com