Opposition turns the heat on MP Richard Azan
OPPOSITION Finance Spokesman Audley Shaw has promised to provide the House with a list of the 28 roads in North West Clarendon, which he claimed were repaired at a cost of $500 million.
It was not clear when the list would be made available to the House of Representatives.
Shaw said, however, that it was an insult that he was the one who would have to produce the information, when the “battery of high level civil servants” accompanying the minister had the information in their files.
The North West Clarendon constituency is represented by the junior works minister Richard Azan, under whose ministry road repairs fall.
Azan was defended by his boss, Works Minster Robert Pickersgill, who told Wednesday’s Standing Finance Committee of the House that Shaw’s allegations were baseless and groundless.
The allegation by Shaw caused an uproar by rowdy MPs, who forced Speaker Michael Peart to adjourn the meeting of the Standing Finance Committee for 15 minutes.
Shaw claimed that the roads in Azan’s constituency were repaired while he was unable to get a single main road in Harry Watch to Craighead of his constituency (North East Manchester) fixed over the past year.
Shaw said the National Contract Committee had not even been involved in the award of the contracts so there was no bidding and they were awarded by a vote out of the ministry.
“I am asking you, as the minister with responsibility for this ministry, do you think that a minister of state ought to so abuse his power in such a vulgar way, while other MPs on both sides of this House are unable to get two or three roads fixed in that same period of one year?” Shaw asked Pickersgill.
“. It is a rumour that has taken on some amount of strength and, as I said, it has no basis in truth or reality,” Pickersgill responded.
The minister said that in the $2.5 billion mitigation and flood control programme across the island last year, it was Opposition MP Delroy Chuck’s North East St Andrew constituency which got the most benefits, amounting to $128 million.
But the Opposition demanded that the minister address the serious allegations made against Azan, instead of dealing with the islandwide road programme.
The speaker also agreed that Pickersgill needed to respond to the North West Clarendon issue,
“I will not allow the opposition to single out Mr Azan and to make those scurrilous remarks which cannot be substantiated,” the minister insisted.
He said that of the $2.5 billion spent on the roads, government MPs got $1.3 billion and the Opposition $1.1 billion.
He said that the Opposition did not want to hear the figures because they showed that there was no victimisation in the process..
Pickersgill later explained that Azan got $103 million from the programme, but that the junior minister also got support to the tune of from 4,000 square cubic yards of material from Jamalco and used that along with the money he got from the programme. “He is a creative MP,” Pickersgill said.