A senior official of the church yesterday called on religious leaders to intensify efforts to remove their own worship centres from the list of Jamaican tax dodgers.General secretary of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Collin Cowan speaking yesterday during the 50th anniversary service of the Hope United Church, at Old Hope Road in St Andrew, said that there was a need for the church, based upon what it stood for, to set an example for other organisations to follow. Paying taxes, he said, was one of them.

The senior churchman admitted that his own church umbrella group had been found guilty of the practice, something he felt had placed "a cloud of shame" over the religious body."Tax authority recently came to claim (assets) for non-payment of taxes. We owe the money and we accept responsibility and will be moving to clear the problem by the middle of the year," said Cowan referring to an operation carried out by an enforcement team from the Inland Revenue Department on Tuesday, March 30 which resulted in two vehicles being removed from the compound of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.The move is one of several carried out by government in recent times to go after tax dodgers. Cowan said that the church umbrella group owed over $19 million in tax arrears.

He also said that in accepting that it (the church) had erred he felt that this was the first step towards bringing about the change. He said that the move would place the religious body in a position to call on other organisations to practise what the church preached.

"I am now rallying and calling on members to help clean up the blot and at the same time calling on other churches to follow in our footstep," said the senior church official pointing out that he was aware that there were other churches across the island that also fell among the group of delinquent tax payers.

"We want to make a public confession of our own complicity and to indicate our commitment to be faithful to our responsibility in that regard and the rallying of our members at the moment is to ensure that we can do that as quickly as possible to ensure that nothing tarnishes our voice," said Cowan.

Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw has in recent weeks warned that Jamaicans deliberately avoiding tax obligations will be slapped with stringent measures to ensure the highest level of compliance.