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The Office of the Contractor General (OCG) said the Cabinet and legislators are not doing enough to fight corruption in Jamaica.
The OCG’s statement comes in the wake of another downgrade of Jamaica by Transparency International in its annual corruption perceptions index (CPI) rankings.
It says the executive and the Parliament have not moved aggressively, proactively and decisively to combat corruption within Jamaica’s borders.
This week the global anti corruption watchdog downgraded Jamaica for the third consecutive year.
Transparency International ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among politicians and public officials.
In its 2009 CPI Rankings, Transparency International scored Jamaica at 3.0 out of a possible 10 and ranked the country 99 out of 180 countries.
Only Guyana, with a CPI score of 2.6 and a country ranking of 126, was positioned worse in the English-Speaking Caribbean.
Since 2006, Jamaica has slipped considerably in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception rankings.
In that year, the country had received a 3.7 CPI score and was ranked as high as 61 out of a total 163 countries.
The OCG said Jamaica’s CPI ratings in the last three years come as no surprise.
In the OCG’s 2008 annual report, which was tabled in Parliament in September, Contractor General Greg Christie raised concern about repeated breaches of government procurement
rules.
Christie said the majority of recommendations by the OCG, in its special report to Parliament, and other proposals in the last two-and-a-half years, have, for the most part, gathered dust.
Christie had argued that if the OCG’s recommendations over the last two decades were given priority attention and speedily implemented much would have been gained in tackling, reducing and eliminating corruption.
He indicated that corruption was costing the Jamaican taxpayer millions, if not billions, each year.
Christie recently urged Parliament to urgently examine its current anti-corruption institutional and legislative framework.
He wants the state’s anti-corruption institutions to be insulated from any possible interference, obstruction or direction from the Executive.
Additionally, he called for stiffer sanctions such as the seizure or confiscation of bribes and the proceeds of acts of corruption as well as punitive criminal sanctions.
http://go-jamaica.com/news/read_article.php?id=14423
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