OPPOSITION Senator Robert Montague wants the Government to go after parents who have dodged the courts and refuse to support their children financially with the same fervour it has gone after lottery scammers.

The Government, Senator Montague said, should enforce maintenance orders by attacking remittance flows.

Montague, who was responding to answers given to him on the issue of maintenance orders by Justice Minister Mark Golding last Friday, asked among other things whether the Government was using its representative offices in some of the large population centres overseas to serve these orders on these persons.

“Is the Government also utilising modern technology to look at these persons who reside overseas but they send large sums of money back to Jamaica through the banks and wire transfers to do other things. Is the Government looking at enforcing the court orders from the proceeds of these remittances?” he wanted to know.

“What I want us to keep focus of is the welfare of the child who is left to suffer and you may have a maintenance order and a parent is involved in other kinds of activities rather than maintaining the child,” he said.

“Government utilises its authority and power for tax purposes and other purposes, why not utilise its representatives, offices and other authorities for the maintenance of our children?” asked Montague, who was local government minister in the previous Jamaica Labour Party administration.

Justice Minister Golding, in his reply, however, said such a move was not necessarily on the radar of the Government at this time.

“On whether an attempt would be made to enforce maintenance orders by attacking remittance flows, for example, I don’t believe there is any policy thrust towards moving in that direction,” Senator Golding said, explaining that an applicant for a maintenance order who is aware that the other party was in the habit of making regular transfers could feed this information to the courts.

“To the best of my knowledge, there is no policy directive in moving towards trying to seize any of those for maintenance purposes,” he told Montague.

However, he has not ruled out the possibility.

“You have raised it and I am quite sure it is something we can look at to consider and maybe you could submit a paper, I would, of course, do some work to see what ramifications there would be, I would be happy to do that for you,” the justice minister said.

In the meantime, however, he said other means are currently employed to effect what Montague wants.

“If a request for assistance is made, it is something we will always look at on a case by case basis, which is something we do a lot, but there is no real policy to look at remittances to see where we can stop it to seize funds for maintenance purposes,” Senator Golding said.

He pointed out that, “in terms of the Government seeking to use intelligence to ferret out where flows may be coming from a particular source in aid of the enforcement of a maintenance order, that facility does not exist”.

“The Government uses the civil procedure and does not step into those procedures in any kind of intrusive way,” Golding added.

For Montague however, the current methods are small comfort.

“A poor mother from the hills of Clarendon left to maintain this child and funds are coming through remittances, the Government has used huge resources to deal with the lotto scam, to deal with other issues, what we need to do is put these children front and centre. The mother may not have the resources to go and do the research to know if the flows are there because they may not be even in the same parish, but the Government has the resources,” he contended.

“The Government has the means to monitor these things, they use it for the lotto scam, why can’t we use it for the children?” Montague argued.

Senator Golding said a total 4,870 maintenance orders were granted on behalf of children in the 2012/13 fiscal year and for the period April 1 to June 30 this year combined.

He said another 12 orders were served on parents outside of Jamaica, while 62 were granted against women in Jamaica. In addition, six maintenance orders were granted against children for the maintenance of their parents during the 2012/13 financial year.