SOME elected representatives of the St James Parish Council have charged that the local authority’s equalisation fund is not being evenly distributed among councillors and have demanded to know how the money is being spent.

The Equalisation Fund which was established in 1997, represents 10 per cent of the revenue that is collected islandwide from property taxes and parish councils can access funds to carry out infrastructural work in the various parish council divisions.

The work has to be approved by the Parish Councils and submitted to the Ministry of Local Government for final approval before the funds are released.

But according to the disgruntled councillors, who made this call at the last monthly meeting, several attempts to secure money from the fund to carry out infrastructural work in their respective divisions have been unsuccessful.

They also charged that only a few of their colleagues are benefiting from the fund, a matter they want addressed urgently.

“I was one of the first councillors to make a request for work to be done in my division and up to now I am yet to receive any benefit from the fund,” Glendon Harris, the People’s National Party (PNP) councillor for the Maroon Town division said.

“And I am not going to rest until there is equitable distribution and I am going to go to another level with the matter. Don’t let us play the one-sided game in here; not because election is coming up, we must be one-sided. Inside of here (parish council) it must be a level playfield,” he added.

Earlier, the Council’s secretary manager Christopher Powell told the meeting that an additional $1-million had been approved from the equalisation fund to carry out repairs on roads in the Moy Hall community. Two months ago, a similar amount was also approved from the fund for infrastructure work in that community, which falls in the constituency of West Central St James. West Central will be contested in the upcoming general election by Mayor of Montego Bay and councillor for the Cambridge division, Hugh Solomon of the PNP and the JLP’s Clive Mullings.

But JLP councillor for the Rose Mount division, Heroy Clarke, asked the meeting why the community of Moy Hall was getting priority attention when the roads in that area were not on the list of roads to benefit from the fund.

“How is that so many roads in St James are in need of repairs and the Councillors here are saying that they have not benefited from the fund, yet Moy Hall has had two draw downs?” Clarke asked.

He added that several roads in the community of Rose Mount and Farm Heights have been on the priority list for repairs since 1999, but they have not benefited from the Fund to date.

“Mr Chairman, don’t you see that something is wrong? Is it because we are in an election year? Mr Chairman, it is not fair, it’s not fair,” Clarke remarked.

During the discussion, the Jamaica Labour Party councillor for the Rose Hall division, Harold Henry also complained that he is yet to benefit from the Fund.

“The citizens in the Rose Hall division are suffering because of a lack of proper roads and I have made several attempts to benefit from the fund and at no time I was successful,” Henry said.

PNP councillor for the Spring Mount division, Donald Colomathi, who is the party’s candidate for the East Central St James in the upcoming general election also told the meeting that no councillor in that constituency had ever benefited from the fund.

“I want to make it clear that East Central St James has never benefited from the equalisation fund,” Colomathi noted.

In his response, Deputy Mayor of Montego Bay, Gerard Mitchell, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Solomon, told the councillors that he empathized with them.

“I empathize with you, there are many of us who have not benefited from the equalisation fund in any form,” Mitchell said.

He promised to take the vexing issue to a meeting of the roads committee where “we will seek to ensure that there is equity in the distribution of the fund”.

The Equalisation Fund forms part of the Local Government Reform programme and is held by the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development.