‘Spring cleaning’ on at JUTC?

Amidst news of the sudden announcement and pending departure of the head of the management team for the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), there are claims that a number of panic buttons have been pressed at the company.

As an example, insiders have reported that instead of the usually quiet day at the company’s head office in Twickenham Park, St Catherine on Saturday there were flurries of activities there, reportedly involving a ‘meeting of the minds’, with the insiders pointing to a virtual ‘spring-cleaning’ operation under way at the complex.

This was four days before the changing of the guard, so to speak, at the state-owned bus company, where political fortunes have radically swung the senior management of the entity for quite some time.

Following the shock general election defeat for the People’s National Party (PNP), now-outgoing Managing Director for the JUTC Colin Campbell, first protested that he had not been politically appointed to the position.

This was despite his fulsome track record in the party, in which he has held a number of top-level positions in the past. These included a Cabinet position as Information Minister, as party General Secretary, Member of Parliament, and reportedly also, as State Minister for Transport and Works.

Campbell insisted that he had no intention of parting with his job before the end of his three-year contract in August of this year, but surprisingly announced his pending departure late last week, after reaching a ‘mutually agreeable settlement’ with the new JUTC  board.