Petitions Policy
This government firmly believes in a consultative process and as such welcomes the views of Jamaicans on matters of national importance.
As a citizen, you have the right to petition your government. The power lies within you to be an advocate for good governance and an agent of change.
Accordingly, this office will consider petitions submitted by local groups and members of the public as one means of consultation. While petitioning the government has the power to enact real change, it is important to note that a petition by itself will not be sufficient to change policy or introduce new policies.
How Petitions Work
- Only Jamaican citizens can create or sign a petition.
- If you gather 15,000 signatures in 40 days, we’ll review your petition, and if it complies with agreed standards, the Office of the Prime Minister will issue an official response.
- All petitions are reviewed before we publish. If they do not meet the terms of participation, they will not be published.
- Persons can submit up to two (2) petitions in a given month.
Standards of Petitions
Petitions will be rejected on the following conditions:
- Similar to an existing petition
- Not clear what you’re asking for
- About a purely personal issue
- Contains threats of unlawful violence or harm to any individual or group
- Uses Obscene, vulgar, or lewd material
- Defamatory or fraudulent statements
- Terms commonly understood to constitute profanity or abusive or degrading slurs or epithets
- Information that invades an individual’s privacy
- Information that if published would violate criminal law or give rise to civil liability
The Office of the Prime Minister may disable user accounts, remove associated signatures and remove petitions created or signed by users that it has reasonable belief do not satisfy the above rules.
Outside of these circumstances, the Office of the Prime Minister will not entertain requests to modify the language of a submitted petition or to remove a signature from it.
The Office of the Prime Minister may block access from IP addresses that it has reasonable belief are using automated systems or bulk processes to create multiple user accounts or petition signatures. The Office of the Prime Minister may also block submission of disposable or time bound signatures.
The Office of the Prime Minister reserves the right to change the time limits and signature threshold and apply them to petitions created after the change has been published to this “Current threshold” section:
AS OF AUGUST 2017:
“A petition must reach 15,000 signatures within 40 days to receive a response from the Office of the Prime Minister.”