Greene light

A Supreme Court judge on Wednesday granted the Government and Errol Greene, former Ministry of Health permanent secretary and current acting CEO of the University Hospital of the West Indies, leave to apply for judicial review to seek several orders in the continuing fight to block the Integrity Commission (IC) from accessing the employment files of several government workers in a corruption probe into the Jamaica-Cuba Eye Care Programme.

The battle over disclosure of those details was sparked in 2025 when the commission — which is probing allegations of irregularities in the ministry’s award and execution of contracts under the programme to determine whether the circumstances surrounding the award and execution of certain contracts breached any applicable policies and laws or gave rise to an act of corruption — issued a notice to the ministry demanding a wide range of information and documents relating to the programme.

The notice sought the personnel/employment files of eight current and former ministry employees as well as “other files” which it did not specify. The health ministry, according to court records, “partially complied with the notice”; however, the legal dispute stemmed from the IC’s demand for the personnel/employment files. Greene, concerned about his role under the Data Protection Act and the constitutionally protected privacy rights of public officers, did not hand over the files; instead, he sought advice from the attorney general (AG).