Ministry of Social Development Employee Sprays Around A Client's Private Information, then Sends It to A Journalist

In an act that utterly defies belief, and to which the Minister of Social Development has turned a contemptuous and wilfully blind eye, a middle management employee of the Ministry of Social Development has transmitted a client's intensely personal files, including medical and financial information, to multiple parties who had no business receiving it, and followed that up by further sending tens of pages of private information to a journalist.

The manager in question is a Marama Stewart, "Manager - Regional Service, Central Region", although it appears other Ministry staffers are almost certainly also involved.

After the "client" found themselves the victim of the loose and unjustifiable distribution of their highly confidential personal information to multiple parties, the distressed client then discovered their information had intentionally also been sent to a journalist. 

In a situation that was undeniably a deliberate and planned act, the distributed material was highly inaccurate, and - according to the distraught Ministry "client" - contained numerous strategic omissions, errors and false claims that the client had attempted unsuccessfully to draw to the attention of numerous Ministry staffers across a "very lengthy period" of time.

Worse still, the particular political persuasion of the client (currently a disability beneficiary) being well-known, the journalist to whom the material was sent, is employed by a publication of directly opposing political views.

Multiple urgent, distressed, "cease and desist" pleas to the Minister of Social Development, Louise Upston, asking for the Ministry to reign in these actions, initially failed to receive any response. Unbelievably, it appeared that the Minister's staff then simply passed the distressed emails back to Stewart, who replied to the client with an email they describe as "translatable as 'too bad; suck it up; because we can'". Stewart's email included a clear statement of intention to keep involving the journalist in her client's affairs, with the indication of an intended action that would mean, if the individual doesn't  suck it up, their benefit entitlements may well (and almost certainly would) be unjustly impacted to an even greater degree than Stewart had ensured was already the case.

To determine "how broadly and how long this has been going on", the client has submitted an urgent OIA request (seeking all information that has been sent not only around the Ministry itself, but most especially to external parties). However, the request ended up back with the same manager (i.e. one Marama Stewart), who has thus far attempted to dilute the request down to the provision of internal communications only.

The matter has now been tabled to the Prime Minister's office, and The Customer & The Constituent looks forward to being updated on the case, and thereafter being able to update our readers accordingly.

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