Code prevents employees to speak up – TVI24

The Directorate-General for Justice Administration (DGAJ) issued a circular, which imposes a conduct code for officials. According to the “Daily News” that, on Tuesday, advancing to the report, DGAJ employees are thus prohibited from speaking to journalists without prior authorization top, talking on the phone or talking loudly in the workplace.

Employees are also required to have the phone in unobtrusively, minimizing the use of personal objects and to operate only by the areas marked for this purpose, even if it means a longer route.

In a circular issued last April 24, the Director-General of Administration of Justice, Pedro Lima Gonçalves, emphasizes that employees are prohibited from “giving interviews, publishing opinion pieces, provide information or publish texts of any kind, which are not available to the general public, on its own initiative or at the request of the media, without, for any case have obtained prior authorization from senior management “ . One of the goals of this kind of law of silence imposed by the “Code of Ethics and Conduct” (so called the document) is to prevent news as denouncing alleged poor conditions in the courts.

“Ethics is not just a word, it is a practice, and these principles should be adopted by all workers without exception DGAJ” also reads the document .

Also according to the same regulation, DGAJ employees placed in open space should adopt “a respectful behavior of colleagues, avoiding anything that might serve as a source of disturbance of the same and as a reduction factor of concentration and productivity. ”

The rules do not please the unions. Speaking to DN, the president of the Judicial Officers Union, Fernando Jorge, he argues: “This looks like a school regulation have to explain to these gentlemen that judicial departments are not a classroom. People behave as it’s supposed to behave, there need not be a set of rules to explain it to us! “.

The same union leader, told Lusa, calls “useless and unnecessary” code of conduct published in the General Directorate of the page the Administration of Justice (DGAJ), which imposes rules of conduct to workers, devaluing the document .

“Bailiffs, in most situations, even unaware that the code was there in the DGAJ page and devalue completely. We think it is a useless and unnecessary document and ends up in some aspects to look ridiculous, “said Fernando Jorge.

Contacted by TVI , the Ministry of Justice has clarified that this code of conduct is, in fact, but only applies to DGAJ employees and not employees of the courts. These are under the jurisdiction of the presiding judge of each court.