PRIME Minister P J Patterson yesterday fired the water and housing minister, Karl Blythe in the face of a damning report by a special commission pointing to ministerial interference, cronyism, poor management and maybe even corruption in Operation PRIDE, the government’s shelter programme that has been mired in controversy since its launch in 1995.

The commission also called for a restructuring of the management of the programme to bring it back in line with its original programme and suggested a forensic audit and fraud investigation on three schemes — Morant Farms, St Benedicts and Melbrook — where there have been specific claims of corruption.

“He (Blythe) has … indicated to me that he would opt, at this time, to become exclusively engaged on the political front and has, therefore, asked to be relieved of his ministerial responsibilities as from Saturday, April 13,” Patterson said in a statement last night. “I have accepted his offer.”

Patterson also disclosed that he has sent copies of the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the police chief and the Auditor General “to assist them in the pursuit of their respective duties”.

Blythe himself could not be contacted for comment last night, but according to Patterson, the former minister had declared “his determination to ensure that there is no semblance of blemish on his integrity”.

Opposition Leader Edward Seaga said Blythe’s departure was “the beginning, not the end” of the investigation of Operation PRIDE, which his Jamaica Labour Party had long insisted was a hotbed of corruption.

“Secondly, in the light of the call for ensuring that party representatives are fit and proper persons, the PNP must declare whether the charges that have been made against Dr Blythe render him unfit to be a political representative,” Seaga added.

While the official statement pitched Blythe’s departure as a resignation, political sources said last night the prime minister had from Wednesday indicated to Blythe that he would have to resign, having the day before read the report he received on Tuesday from the Erwin Angus investigative commission established in mid-February.

“The prime minister told a few key people of his decision, but had already signalled that the chips would have to fall where they will, depending on the findings of the report,” a senior PNP source said last night. “The difficulty the prime minister had today was drafting and fine-tuning the statement that was eventually released. He and his aides took a very long time over it.”

Patterson named Angus, a retired civil servant, to head the probe because of the public relations battering his administration was taking after the leaking of an internal document indicating that over-runs on PRIDE projects could top $5 billion and suggesting that favoured contractors got most of the jobs.

The Angus report, released last night indicated over-runs substantially less than what was suggested by consultants for the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC), the agency under which Operation PRIDE falls — $928.25 million in respect of 21 sample projects and another $113.7 million on five schemes that have been abandoned.

In a number of other projects, the cost of the development would push them far out of the league of the people for whom the scheme was originally fashioned.

But the four-member commission found, too, that Blythe, when he took over as housing minister in February 2000, went on an expansion binge — over-turning a policy that was put in place because of previous difficulties — and told bureaucrats to allow paperwork to catch up with expansion.

“This served to return the NHDC to the situation it had struggled to overcome, in that construction began with incomplete or inadequate designs and there was a general lack of effort to obtain requisite approvals, ensure loan agreements implementation and meet regulatory requirements, including government’s ownership of the relevant sites,” the report noted.

Even more damaging to Blythe was the impression formed by the commissioners, based on their interviews, of a direct hands-on, involvement in by the minister in the PRIDE scheme and that he shared power with a small coterie of aides.

Said the commissioners: “Notwithstanding the afore-noted viewpoints to the contrary (by Blythe), the commission found significant documented evidence that the minister of water and housing is far more involved in the detailed administration of Operation PRIDE than the commission was led to believe during the course of his interview and that he was, in fact, informed of several of the problems facing the NHDC, including the company’s financial constraints.”

At another point, the report remarked: “The commission finds the actions of the minister of water and housing to be troubling, particularly in light of his full knowledge that many of (his) actions caused or contributed to the problems encountered in implementation. We would recommend that ministerial influence is restricted to guidance with respect to general policy issues and not extend to the daily administrative operations of the NHDC.”

KARL BLYTHE

Karl Blythe, the son of a parson and a medical doctor, was elected as member of parliament for Central Westmoreland in March 1993.

He was appointed state minister in the Ministry of Health that same year, but in January 1995 he resigned from the ministry after he was overlooked for a full ministerial appointment in P J Patterson’s first Cabinet reshuffle. In December 1997, Blythe was relected as MP and was named as head of the new Ministry of Water in January 1998.

He was later elected as vice president for the ruling People’s National Party, after a vigorous campaign.

He took over the housing portfolio after Easton Douglas asked not to be reconsidered in a Cabinet reshuffle in 2000.