A number of state homes are now faced with dwindling food supplies as a result of overdue payments to suppliers, according to Alison McLean, the chief executive officer of the Child Development Agency (CDA).

“We do have a problem. We are way behind in terms of payments on food bills,” McLean told a meeting of the Joint Select Parliamentary Committee examining the reports of various public bodies last week.

McLean made the disclosure while briefing committee members on the entity’s budget which she said had been slashed by $400 million this fiscal year. The CDA Head, who has come under much fire over a number of deficiencies in her office and homes islandwide, said instead of the $1.6 billion the CDA had requested it had only ended up with a little over $1.2 billion.

Asked by Committee Member Fitz Jackson whether the slashed budget impacted severely on food supplies aside from the arrears McLean admitted, “It does; you will go on a given day and the stores might look quite empty simply because they have not been able to pay, and so they haven’t been able to get their supplies.”

“We have received that money (budgetary allocation). We don’t receive it generally within the time frame we require, but generally speaking our cashflow has not been as problematic as maybe others (state agencies) have been,” she added.

“As bad as it might sound, it is not so much of a bad news. If she is getting her $1.2 billion it means if she gets the allocation it should ameliorate the situation much more,” Jackson said.

It was not immediately clear whether the situation outlined by McLean affected the more than 40 government homes in the island.

When contacted later for a comment, CDA officials were reluctant to say how much was owed to suppliers and over what period the amounts were outstanding. Instead, the Sunday Observer was told that the CDA was engaged in meetings with the finance committee about the agency’s budget, and could not respond to the query at the moment.

However, one official in the childcare system, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained that “there has never really been a situation where they (homes) were out of food.

“We have had to work with individual suppliers to say, look, this is the situation… but the supply of food hasn’t stopped; it’s just how quickly we have been able to pay the bills. We are perhaps like a month or so behind each time, so for example, last month’s bill would get paid this month,” the Sunday Observer was told.

The lion’s share of the CDA’s $1.2 billion 2008/09 expenditure was on the residential care programme. Thirty-five per cent of the budget was spent on compensation and 20 per cent on goods and services.

The human resources of the CDA include 75 children’s officers, regional directors and four clinical psychologists.

At the end of December 2007, there were 2,442 children in state care.