FINANCE minister Omar Davies yesterday caused outrage among opposition MPs with the announcement of a $146-million or 32 per cent cut in the fund from which parliamentarians are usually allocated money for discretionary projects in their constituencies.

Led by Delroy Chuck, the member of parliament for North Central St Andrew, Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parliamentarians complained that a number of them had already committed to projects in their constituencies on the basis of being given the greenlight by the Cabinet Office, which manages the so-called Social and Economic Support Prgramme (SESP).

"There is nobody on the government side asking for the money, only this side seem to have a problem," complained Pearnel Charles, the JLP member for North Central Clarendon, but said he was not accusing Davies of anything.

"We understand that there is a problem, but the minister should look at the fact that MPs have gone out and made commitments on the basis that the money would be forthcoming," Charles pleaded.

Deemed in many quarters as a kind of political pork barrel, the SESP allows Parliament's 60 members to apply for funding for projects which are ostensibly vetted by the Cabinet Office ahead of approval. The money is then released by the finance ministry.

But Davies told yesterday's sitting of the House's Standing Finance Committee that the SESP allocation of approximately $460 million was being cut by $146 million, as part of the administration's efforts to contain the public sector deficit for the fiscal year ending March 31 to just under seven per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The finance ministry had already disbursed $284 million under the programme and another $30 million will be disbursed by month-end, based on payment warrants, Davies said.

In the past, an MP could be allocated between $4 million and $5 million for community projects, depending on the size of the constituencies and some special government work programmes sometimes fall under the SESP.

Yesterday, MPs suggested that with Davies' announcement their individual allocations would be slashed by between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, or up to a third.

Critics of the programme have argued that the SESP, and its companion scheme, the Local Development Programme (LDP) - which in the current budget puts aside $30 million for ministries to fund ad hoc community projects - open the way for the partisan use of state resources.

Projects should be routed through the formal government bureaucracy than politicians, critics of the schemes say.
However, the usually retort of MPs is that they are more in tune with community needs and are in a better position to respond quickly to the constituents, particularly in cases of emergencies.

Davies, though, set the cut in the context of the financial constraints facing the government and earned the ire of the Opposition when he suggested that MPs were "irresponsible" to have made firm commitments on projects prior to disbursement of funds.

As the crescendo of Opposition criticism grew, Leader of the House of Representatives, Dr Peter Phillips, warned against turning the matter into a narrow, politically-partisan issue.

"It is their right if a political point has to be made," he said. "Where we have to be careful is that in generating the dynamic of exchange and counter-exchange, we do not bring this chamber, or this debate, to a level that will be regretted not only by us, but by the entire country."
The fact that there was fiscal constraint had been openly admitted, Phillips said.

Charles, however, suggested that Davies, rather than making an across-the-board cut in the funding examine individual cases 'so that where people have made commitments, in the best interest, he can do something about it".

Health Minister John Junor (PNP, Central Manchester) suggested that some of the approaches to the management of the SESP allocations by MPs were wrong.

"The practice I follow is that, although you get a commitment that says that you have three million something and you submit programmes, I await word from the SESP that they have an allocation and that it has gone to the ministry or the parish council," he said. "Once I have verification of that cheque, I then start implementing the programme through respective agencies."

He was supported by Sharon Hay-Webster (PNP, South Central St Catherine).

But, Leader of Opposition Business in the House, Derrick Smith, blamed Davies' management of the programme and said the JLP could not, in the circumstance, support the cut.

"We think that if the programme was better managed, or effectively managed, then MPs would have been given notice that there is likely to be a shortfall," Smith said. "The minister has come here, against the background of historically paying the full amount."

Rejecting Davies' suggestion of irresponsible behaviour on the part of MPs who had already committed to projects, Smith demanded that the reinstatement of the fund "to the full amount".

Davies admitted to Opposition finance spokesman, Audley Shaw, that there was no previous occasion which he had to cut the SESP, as far as he could recall, and promised to provide Shaw with a breakdown of allocations.

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