Tip Of The Iceberg

It is not unrea­son­able for Public Officials to have com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices which helps them to car­ry out their duties effec­tive­ly. If fact it is quite expect­ed that a respon­si­ble Government would sup­ply it’s oper­a­tives with the tools they need to do an effec­tive job. These spe­cial lit­tle priv­i­leges, or perks as some crit­ics label them were nev­er intend­ed to be abused, yet pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are known to do exact­ly that.

Anyone who served in the Police Force can tes­ti­fy to the fact that there were times when there was one vehi­cle at a giv­en Police Station, some­times none , yet the Superintendent , Inspector or some oth­er Non-com­mis­sioned offi­cer in charge would dri­ve that lone vehi­cle home, leav­ing no vehi­cle at the station.

Of course when calls come in offi­cers on duty are forced to tell the pub­lic that there are no vehi­cles to attend to the calls. These are dis­gust­ing truths, yet they went on for years and I sus­pect they still occur today. What made them more egre­gious is the fact that Superintendents of Police were des­ig­nat­ed Civil Servants and as a result of that des­ig­na­tion received trav­el­ling allowances to off­set some of the cost of travelling.

With only mea­ger com­pli­ance to request for pub­lic infor­ma­tion on how tax­pay­ers monies are being han­dled, it was recent­ly revealed that one Junior Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Arnaldo Brown had the high­est cell­phone bill among Government min­is­ters for 2013, rack­ing up just under $1.1 mil­lion over the 12-month peri­od — near­ly five times that of his senior AJ Nicholson.

We don’t know what exact­ly his job descrip­tion is. Does his job require him to use a cell phone with such fre­quen­cy and to that fini­cal cost to the pub­lic? We sim­ply do not know. It may also be incon­se­quen­tial Brown’s boss used the phone far less than he did.

What seem to be appar­ent is a con­tin­ued mind­set that there is a nev­er end­ing slush fund of tax­pay­er mon­ey to be abused. This is not new . For decades count­less Jamaicans have entered Politics sole­ly for the pur­pose of get­ting rich. The Salary is not enough to get them rich yet even after just a sin­gle term in office some walk away wealthy.

Politics was nev­er intend­ed to be a place where one gar­nered wealth. Service to Country and one’s fel­low man is a Honorable pur­suit, that real­i­ty seem to be lost on some politi­cians. More and more Jamaicans are see­ing just how cor­rupt and dis­gust­ing­ly dis­hon­est their elect­ed offi­cials are . Unfortunately for them there are no checks and bal­ances in place to put Jamaica’s crim­i­nal politi­cians in Jail .The peo­ple doing the steal­ing are the peo­ple respon­si­ble for stop­ping it.

Whether it be in sug­ar deals where a Prime Minister becomes filthy rich, unscrupu­lous deals with an Oil com­pa­ny and kick-back in mon­ey to fund cam­paigns. Whether it be bla­tant, overt , rapa­cious abuse of a light-bulb dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gram and a Magistrate sim­ply cir­cum­vent the process to set a Politician free , Jamaicans con­tin­ue to pay the price.

The fact is, Jamaicans pre­tend there is a Democratic Parliamentary sys­tem in place. I guess it makes them feel good , after all Jamaicans are mas­ter pre­tenders . The fact is Jamaica has long been a Kleptocracy. It’s façade of a sys­tem is geared to pun­ish the poor, and those sworn to uphold the laws. The sys­tem rewards and encour­ages crim­i­nal­i­ty in the streets even as those in Parliament live like mod­ern-day Barons.

This lat­est cell phone rev­e­la­tion is not even the tip of the ice­berg . There is no real account­abil­i­ty. Nothing which holds those with polit­i­cal pow­er account­able. In the mean­time Jamaicans will have to bend their backs and raise their chil­dren to bend their backs to pay back the Billions bor­rowed to fat­ten the polit­i­cal class.