Harrison likens municipal corporations to corruption cesspool

Damion Mitchell, Integration Editor

Anti-corruption campaigner Dirk Harrison has likened Jamaica's municipal corporations (formerly called parish councils) to a corruption cesspool.

So rife is the level of wrongdoing, Harrison, a former contractor General, said he has recommended on more than one occasion that the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) plant operatives in the corporations to investigate and expose offenders.

"The parish councils, I dare say, tend to be a cesspool of corruption," Harrison said on Wednesday night at a public lecture put on by the St Luke's Anglican Church in Cross Roads, Kingston.

He said there was strong anecdotal evidence that officers of the municipal corporations have been collecting bribes to approve building permits and other applications.

The former contractor general detailed a personal experience with a parish council, he said, ignored valid complaints he filed as an attorney about building encroachments and instead permitted the developer to pursue the construction project despite the clear breaches.

Corruption perception ranking will plunge 

Harrison is warning that Jamaica's corruption perception ranking will plunge when the next index is released in January by Transparency Internationally and has asserted that wrongdoing in the municipal corporations will be among the contributing factors.

"We are falling down," Harrison said.

"We are going back to where we were 10 years ago. Everything is slowing down," he added.

Out of 175 countries ranked in the 2018 Index, Jamaica is the 70th least corrupt nation.

Also in 2018, corruption in Jamaica averaged 72.32 from 1998 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 99 in 2009 and a record low of 45 in 2002.

Harrison said too that although the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency was continuing its hard work, there were not enough arrests.

Turning to corruption in contract awards, Harrison said one contractor has told him that he has now given up on bidding for government contracts because it is not profitable after paying the dons, police and politicians.

READ: Former corruption czar says politicians, dons, police fleecing contractors

To make matters worse, he said there was intense greed on the part of those corruptly demanding money from contractors.

According to Harrison, in 2016 an estimated US$867 million (J$82 billion) were awarded in Jamaica.

"That's a lot of money! A lot for everyone,  no need for greed," Harrison said.

He said too, that although demonstrations with placard-bearing protesters are the only things to which governments respond, Jamaicans must take a bold, sustained stand in resisting corruption because it cannot be left to legislators.

"Legislators cannot make laws to enforce good behaviour, the can only make laws to punish bad behaviour," he said.

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