Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Transport, Water and Works, Richard Azan (MP, North-West Clarendon) has come under severe attack from Opposition MPs in recent months for his approach to his job.

The Opposition MPs claim that Azan has been deliberately ignoring them on trips to their constituencies to view infrastructural problems, such as bad roads and bridges. They claim that he is often in the company of the PNP caretaker/candidates and that these persons are the ones asked to send him lists of job seekers.

The issue took on added interest recently with the new estimates revealing that approximately $4.3 billion of the additional funding for the ministry is to repay loans from the PetroCaribe Fund and the Venezuela Investment Fund, which have already been used to repair roads, clean drains and for disaster mitigation.

There is also the fact that the ministry will get an additional $1.6 billion to facilitate emergency works resulting from flooding, this year, including road repairs, to be effected through the National Works Agency (NWA), as well as $111 million for cleaning gullies ahead of anticipated flood rains.

The situation was further aggravated during last week’s meeting of the Standing Finance Committee (SFC) of the House, when Opposition spokesman on finance, Audley Shaw, claimed that Azan used $500 million of the ministry’s funds to finance work on 28 roads in his (Azan’s) constituency alone last year.

Shaw has promised to produce a list of the roads, although he insisted that the civil servants who were present at the SFC already had the information in their possession. Speaker Michael Peart says he is awaiting the list.

In the meantime, the minister, Robert Pickersgill, sought to defend his junior minister, a newcomer, having been first elected in 2002, and whose stocks have risen significantly since strongly supporting Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s successful bid for the PNP presidency last year.

Pickersgill said that Azan got less than some JLP MPs, including Delroy Chuck (North-East St Andrew). He said that Azan got $103 million, compared to Chuck’s $128 million, but had received “4,000 square cubic yards” of material from Jamalco, which he used to beef up his programme.

Hopefully, either Azan or Pickersgill will also furnish the speaker with evidence about the Jamalco donation.

On Wednesday evening, Azan circulated to the Gordon House press corps a copy of a letter he said he had written to the Observer, rejecting comments made by the leader of the opposition, Bruce Golding, in a news article headlined “Golding describes PNP MP as political relic”.

An interesting point raised by Azan in that letter was that with 26 seats the JLP had only 43 per cent in the House of Representatives, but received 45 per cent of the allocations in the Special Flood Damage Programme, which is at the centre of the controversy.

This and other points made by Azan in this letter, including the amounts the Opposition MPs got, were repeated in the House during the SFC meeting on Wednesday by Pickersgill.

This raises a fascinating new angle of assessing how public funds are spent by Government. Should the spending be on the basis of the percentage of seats each side has in the House?

The fact that Pickersgill, who is not only the senior politician in the ministry, but also the chairman of the ruling party, saw fit to repeat it in the House really makes it a valid issue.

In addition, at the last sitting of the House, on March 27, the leader, Dr Peter Phillips, tabled answers from the prime minister to questions connected to the issue which had been tabled previously by the leader of the opposition. Golding was absent at the time, so the answers were not read nor were there any follow-up questions.

The questions tabled by Golding and the answers from Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller were as follows:

QUESTION 1: Is the prime minister aware of a policy directive issued by the Government and contained in Circular No 6, dated 2nd October, 1990 and signed by the financial secretary which states, inter alia:

“Any work or project to be undertaken in any constituency must be brought to the prior attention of the member of parliament. Failure to do so opens the door to discrimination in employment and possible disruption triggered by community unrest. This rule is to be applied whether the member of parliament is on the Government or Opposition side.”

ANSWER: Yes, I am aware.

QUESTION 2: Is this still the policy of the Government?

ANSWER: Cabinet decision No 28 of 30th July, 2001, which addressed proposals for the engagement of workers for special employment programmes and critical community-based projects, supercedes the earlier guidelines of Circular 6. The policy directive at quote in the previous question is de facto no longer in force.

There was no indication from the PM’s answers as to what the new policy is. But certainly, this is going to be a very serious issue during both the upcoming budget debate and the elections likely to follow.

Samuda makes case for meeting at Conference Centre

Opposition MP Karl Samuda (North Central St Andrew) thinks that the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, offers such a relaxed atmosphere for meetings of House committees, compared to Gordon House, that he wants Parliament to use it more often.

The Privileges Committee, which has been trying to sanction Samuda for allegedly misleading the House for several months now, had to resort to the centre because of a lack of space at Gordon House last month.

The Conference Centre was really a pleasant development: much better acoustics; less cramped space and better air-conditioning.

But the question is, can Parliament afford it from its recurrent budget of $505 million, of which $315 million pays staff and $84 million is for grants and contributions to its commissions, including the Office of the Political Ombudsman, the Integrity Commission and the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption.

The House leader, Dr Phillips, responded:

“This is a matter which really the House Committee would need to consider. There is nothing to prevent us, from time to time, meeting in committee down there and, in fact, the leave of the House has often been given to have that take place.

“The question of facilities for Parliament, as you know, and about which you feel strongly, is something that we have considered. We have some processes already underway to deal with that. I think that there is need in society for the conference centre and there is also need for a proper Parliament. When the House has agreed on a set of proposals, then we can take them forward.”

Samuda responded: “I think we have reached the stage now where we can’t really work much longer within this facility.”

Throne speech

It is very interesting that while a memorandum was circulated by the Cabinet Office to all permanent secretaries on January 19, outlining the needs for the opening of the new session of Parliament, the Throne Speech turned out to be so insubstantial.

The memorandum, which followed a meeting of the Permanent Secretaries Board on January 17, was titled “Contributions to the Throne Speech”, and stated, “Permanent secretaries are asked to liaise with their ministers regarding contributions to the Throne Speech for FY 2006/7 and to submit highlights of their ministry’s performance to the Cabinet Office by mid-February. The main areas of focus should be on the passage of key legislation and major accomplishments of each ministry in priority areas, and in particular, for those programmes that impact poverty reduction and the delivery of services to the most vulnerable in the society. Your co-operation is anticipated”.

Well, maybe the focus on poverty reduction and delivery of services was the fly in the ointment. The civil servants had approximately one month to find and produce the information in time for the Throne Speech, and we doubt, very much, that they would have deliberately refused to co-operate with their bosses.

But there is probably another explanation.

Note that the circular, as quoted above, asked them to “liaise with their minister regarding contributions to the Throne Speech for FY (Financial Year) 2006/7”.

Now, any sensible civil servant would have realised that the 2006/7 Throne Speech was already delivered on April 12, last year, so it could have been an act of Tom Foolery.