Two of the government’s senior technocrats have emerged with opposing views on the most cost-effective method of delivering services to the poor.

Dr Wesley Hughes favours the creation of a new ministry to run all poverty alleviation programmes.

But, Dr Jaslin Salmon insists that the job can be done by an executive agency.

“I believe a ministry would create tremendous expenses, which would eat up the meagre resources we have to put into the poverty programmes,” Dr Salmon, coordinator of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NPEP), told the Sunday Observer last week.

“I want to see a less expansive structure, but one that would provide the kind of coordination and integration that we want.”

Salmon was responding to Dr Hughes’ embrace of a call by academic Robert Buddan for the creation of a Ministry of Human Development under which all poverty programmes would coalesce for better management of service delivery.

Buddan, in a presentation at a poverty alleviation forum hosted by the Office of the Prime Minister at Jamaica House more than a week ago, had suggested that the creation of this human development ministry could help reduce poverty levels in Jamaica to single-digit.

The current levels are 16.9 per cent.

Last week, Hughes, director general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica and chair of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) – an agency within the poverty programme network – told the Sunday Observer that he was pleased that Buddan’s view coincided with his own.

Buddhan had also suggested the floating of a 20-year bond to seed the ministry.

“I made the call internally some time ago, so I was heartened to hear Dr Buddan making the call as I had not had any discussion about it with him,” Hughes said.

However, he made it clear that the idea was still being discussed in government circles.

“My approach is not the only approach,” Dr Hughes said. “I know, for example, Dr Salmon has another approach.”

Dr Salmon believes that a new ministry would only increase the size of government at a time when it should be reduced. It would also be a costly and complicated exercise, he argues.

“Ministries don’t give up positions that readily, and you would get caught up in that battle over whose position is whose, and I don’t think I want to see us caught in that,” Dr Salmon told the Sunday Observer.

He explained that many poverty-alleviation programmes formed part of the core functions of ministries, and said he saw no need to move these programmes from their ministries.

“There are many functions taking place in the ministries for which they need the people at this point,” Dr Salmon said. “If you were to set up a new ministry you would be expanding government; I think we need to contract the government.”

Salmon supports the establishment of an executive agency with legal authority to coordinate all poverty programmes throughout the government. “It would have a core of technocrats, who have the authority to tie in with the ministries and some responsibility to sign off on budgetary issues,” he said.

Both technocrats were quick to point out that their disagreement on the issue was not contentious, and that they both agreed on the need for greater coordination of the programmes.

“It’s an ongoing debate at various levels,” Dr Hughes said.

Added Dr Salmon: “We have a common understanding that there is need for a new institutional framework. It’s a reasoned dialogue between Dr Hughes and myself.”

On the matter of whether the country was spending too much to deliver benefits to the poor, Dr Hughes said it was so about four years ago before the Social Safety Net Reform Programme was introduced, but that was no longer the case.

Last week, the Sunday Observer reported Dr Hughes as saying the delivery of social relief in many instances was greater than the relief. “It can cost $1.50 to deliver a benefit of $1,” he had said.

However, he said last week that he was referring to the situation before the reforms were introduced, but did not have the more current figures available immediately.

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