Complaints made against Desmond McKenzie

Jamaica Civil Service Association President O’Neil Grant has questioned the credibility of a claim by the opposition leader on Thursday that civil servants in a particular ministry is being asked to disclose how they voted in the February general election

In fact, Grant said that the only complaint the organisation got about the treatment of civil servants had to do with the manner in which Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie address senior directors.

“What I know of is that some of our members at Local Government — the senior directors — have complained about how they have been spoken to by the new minister and that’s the most in terms of a complaint we have received from my members about how the new administration has been treating public service workers. I have not heard any other negative comment,” Grant said in an interview with Radio Jamaica.

During her contribution to the 2016/2017 budget debate in Parliament Thursday, Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller called on the prime minister to investigate information that civil servants in a particular ministry were being asked to disclose how they voted in the election that brought the Jamaica Labour Party to power.

“It should be no business of the political directorate how any civil servant votes. That is their constitutional right,” Simpson Miller said. “I’m therefore saddened to have learned. I don’t know if it’s true but I’m going to say that, prime minister, you can investigate it.”

But Grant said he doesn’t think the information from the opposition leader is credible.

“I don’t think that is a credible statement based on how we see this government operating. They don’t even relieve some of the previous board members that we saw has certain leanings, some boards have been kept intact. So I don’t think there is any political witch-hunt that is taking place,” Grant said.