Outgoing Commissioner of Corrections for Post in OPM

Outgoing Commissioner of Corrections, Mrs. June Spence Jarrett, is to take up a post within the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
“I can confirm that the Public Services Commission has indicated (her) transfer to the OPM. I have not been informed…yet, whether that has actually reached to us formally and where in the OPM she will be located,” Minister without Portfolio in the OPM, with responsibility for Information, Telecommunications and Special Projects, Hon. Daryl Vaz, said, during today’s (March 17) weekly post-Cabinet press briefing, at Jamaica House.
The action follows the Commission of Enquiry into the fire at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Facility in May last year, which caused the deaths of seven girls.
Minister Vaz further informed that an individual from the Jamaica Defence Force has been seconded to act as Head of the Department of Correctional Services.
He said that the decision to transfer the Commissioner of Corrections was arrived at after the matter was referred to the Public Service Commission.
Pointing to other actions that have been taken by the Government so far, in relation to the incident – the interdiction of the police officers involved in the incident and the transfer to Local Government of former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, Major Richard Reese – Mr. Vaz said that despite the perception that the Government has not moved swiftly enough to address these matters, “we are tied and limited to the prescribed actions that have to be taken.”
“Sometimes the country feels that the government is not acting as quickly as they should, but all of these things have procedures to follow and therefore it takes some time before the actual end result comes about, and it’s not that Government has not acted, but we are constrained (by) the procedures that (we have to) follow,” Minister Vaz explained.
He noted that the transfer of the Permanent Secretary is under the Prime Minister’s purview and the other issues of transfers or actions to be taken, fall under the Public Service Commission.