NEWLY elected Member of Parliament for Western St Mary and junior minister in charge of Local Government, Robert “Bobby” Montague, yesterday expressed surprise at Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller’s attempts to throw cold water on his administration’s proposal to make parish councils independent.

Simpson Miller, speaking at the People’s National Party’s one-day conference at the National Arena on Sunday, had criticised the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) move. In questioning the viability of the proposal, the Opposition Leader also voiced doubts as to whether the JLP’s plan to allocate two and a half per cent of the budget to 60 members of parliament was feasible.

“I’m surprised at the Leader of the Opposition making such a statement, being a patron of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum. One of the things she did as patron of that forum was to speak to the increased powers from central government to local government,” Montague said immediately after being sworn as state minister at King’s House yesterday.

He said he could not grasp how Simpson Miller, who in her “role as former patron and board member of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum and Chair of CARICOM Local Government Ministers’ forum, would be expressing these doubts, having been one of those active participants over the last 30 years pushing the reforms that the JLP will now implement”.

He was also quick to point out that the Local Government Ministry still exists.

“The Ministry of Local Government is not being abolished. My office will be at Hagley Park Road (as under the former administration) and I would be very surprised if I go to Hagley Park Road and I am the only person there. But my mandate is to implement the reform so that we can have increased service delivery and accountability and transparency in Government,” Montague explained.

Montague said his duty would be to ensure that Local Government is entrenched in the Constitution of Jamaica so that “more power is given to the Councils in the respective parishes”.

“The Jamaica Labour Party believes that Local Government is a different sphere of Government, it is not an extension of Central Government as it is being operated now.

Therefore we want to divorce Central Government from the Local Government so we can have improved service delivery. The Councillors were elected separately from the Members of Parliament and we would like to implement the reforms that we have been talking for the last 30 years. We want to make them real,” he told the Observer.

Meantime, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, speaking after the swearing in of the 11 state ministers and two parliamentary secretaries, yesterday made it clear that there would be no differentiation in the amounts given to JLP or PNP constituencies and that the fund would not be “a free-for-all”.

“This is not going to be slush fund, this is not going to be a pork barrel, it is going to be subjected to the most stringent scrutiny. We are going to be requiring that it be audited 100 per cent. We are not going to allow MPs to dispense as they wish,” the Prime Minister said.

Golding told the gathering that all Members of Parliament would be required to develop and submit to Parliament a five-year constituency development plan for approval before March 31 next year.

Speaking further on the issue of funding, the prime minister said the funds, some of which represent “funds that MPs now have discretion to use will be reallocated into the Constituency Development Fund,” to be managed by the party’s former local government spokesperson Shahine Robinson.

Golding also touched on the contentious issue at a meeting of the JLP’s area council one meeting on Sunday. At the time, he said, there were persons in the PNP who “did not like the idea” of parish councils being independent and even persons in the JLP who had “serious reservations”.

Addressing concerns that the ministry was “headless”, Golding said given the fact that the ministers assigned would report to his office he was in fact the “minister”.

“In effect I am the Minister until such time as the reform is complete,” Golding explained.