THE LATEST Government agency to prepare a Citizen's Charter is the beleaguered Jamaica Constabulary Force. There have been numerous complaints of police unresponsiveness and negligence and cries of police abuse and brutality, over the years. And once again the microscope is turned on the police in relation to drug-trafficking allegations.
When Prime Minister P.J. Patterson launched the concept of the Citizen's Charter in 1994, there was a glimmer of hope that the Public Service would begin to take customer service seriously. A handful of state agencies have since developed Charters. A few have been converted into Executive Agencies. But, as the frequent complaints about the Registrar General's Department and the Customs Department, among other Charter agencies underscore, there is still a long way to go towards providing acceptable levels of service to the public.
Back in 1994, many observers felt the JCF was a key agency with which to start the Citizen's Charter process. There is hardly another department of Government which has been so pilloried by the public for unsatisfactory service.
Now, six years later, the police are attempting to catch up. In the interim, the Force published a Corporate Strategy outlining steps to be taken to improve performance and its relationship with the public which it is pledged "to serve, to protect and to reassure". The difference is yet to be widely felt.
The Charter, which Chairman of the Police Service and Ethics Board, Dr. Henley Morgan, describes as a "service contract with customers", is to cover all aspects of the interface between police and public, from 119 responses to guardroom operations.
The planned improvements in service and ethics require major changes in the organisational culture of the Force. That's the hard part. The frustrations of Commissioner Francis Forbes and his predecessor Col. Trevor McMillan in engineering change are well documented.
Dr. Morgan understands the importance of the close involvement of the rank and file and of customer education, for the success of a process which can place both the police and the public in a win-win situation.
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
