Home affairs minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin and her shadow counterpart Walton Brown have clashed following the revelation that 27 jobs held by guest workers in Bermuda churches did not have to be advertised.

The Royal Gazette reported yesterday that the Department of Immigration had granted 22 waivers and 5 automatic advertising exemptions for a range of clerical jobs, including ministers, priests, canons and missionaries, as well as other non-clerical posts.

The disclosure came after public scrutiny over the refusal of a work-permit renewal application for the Reverend Nicholas Tweed, pastor of St Paul AME Church.

The Church has complained that after it appealed the refusal, it was denied a waiver of the requirement to advertise the position; Ms Gordon-Pamplin has said the Church missed its deadline to request the waiver. In a statement, Mr Brown called for Ms Gordon-Pamplin to resign, accusing her of misleading the public by previously suggesting waivers were uncommon.

Bob Richards, responding in his capacity as Acting Premier, last night branded the resignation call “ludicrous”, saying Ms Gordon-Pamplin had been “an outstanding public servant for many years and her integrity has never been called into question — for good reason”.

He said: “It’s unfortunate in this instance that Opposition eagerness to attack took precedence over facts and fair hearing, but that’s what politics-before-all gets you.”

Responding at a press conference earlier in the day, Ms Gordon-Pamplin acknowledged that in a January 6 press conference she provided statistics for advertising of positions for the clergy for 2016, in which one waiver had been received for the clergy.

Yesterday’s article was based on a response from the Department of Immigration to a Pati request from this newspaper for details of all work permits held by churches.

The Minister said the information shared in the Pati response dated back to 2013 and included all active applications submitted by churches for all job types. She added that government policy had been fully adhered to when those waivers were granted.

Mr Brown stated: “The revelation that the Department of Immigration has granted not less than 27 advertising waivers for churches in the past three years has now put minister Gordon-Pamplin in an untenable position. The minister has not been forthright in providing the public with critical information on how church work permits are currently being handled. What we have seen instead is incremental information reluctantly released.

“It is clear that waivers are far more common than the minister indicated in her public statements. When I consider these facts alongside the minister’s publicly expressed disagreement with Rev [Nicholas] Tweed’s pastoring, it seems clear that political interference has contoured the minister’s actions.

“On June 24, 2016 the minister told Parliament why she ceased attending St Paul AME Church: ‘I have refused to go to the church that I have been a member of for 60 years because I was getting barbs coming from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday after Sunday when I go for spiritual rejuvenation.’

“This statement alone is sufficient to warrant her ill-suited to be making any determination on the Tweed application.”

Ms Gordon-Pamplin claimed: “The statement that the department has granted 27 waivers for work permits for churches is misleading.”

She added: “In my press conference of January 6, I provided statistics for advertising of positions for the clergy for 2016 only. This information was taken from the Job Board.

“I also noted that in 2016 we received one waiver for that category of job i.e. the clergy. In contrast, the applications in the Pati response dated back to as early as 2013. The information provided in the Pati request included all active applications submitted by churches for all job types including 15 missionaries from the Church of Latter-Day Saints, two musicians and seven positions that either were not required to be advertised or where there was an automatic exemption, such as a guest speaker and sound technicians for special events.

“There were a total of six clergy that applied for a waiver of advertising and all six made proper application and paid the requisite fee. “Specifically, with respect to today’s response by the department to the Pati request, it appears from the newspaper article that the question was for all positions within the various churches.

“Notwithstanding that our press conference was in respect of a particular matter, the response to the Pati request, and further investigation of the responses shows clearly that the policy was fully adhered to, as applications were made and fees paid to request the waivers.”