THE handling of the decision of the Government to remove regulation of the public passenger transport sector from the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has raised some doubts as to how Parliament handles such important decisions.

The House of Representatives gave affirmative approval on June 18 to an order, issued by the prime minister, that the regulation of the public transportation sector be removed from the jurisdiction of the Office of Utilities Regulation.

This has some raised some questions, including:

(1) Why was it necessary for the Government to remove this authority from the OUR?

(2) Why was it removed in the midst of the court’s handing of three lawsuits brought by the Rural Transit Company Limited, an organisation representing private stakeholders in the public transportation system, against the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC)?

(3) Since the order, which was gazetted on June 13 and approved within a week in the House of Representatives, removes regulatory control of the sector from the OUR but does not say to which body this authority has been transferred, who is currently regulating the transport sector?

(4) Were the Members of Parliament, other than Minister Phillip Paulwell, the House Leader who handled the affirmative vote, fully aware of the implications of the order at the time of the vote?

The latter question has to be raised, because speaking with some of the MPs who were present, it appeared that very few of them, especially the opposition MPs, were aware of the implications.

The House Leader gave no details of the change the order had made. In fact, he only read the ministerial order as published in the Gazette of Friday, June 13, as follows:

“In exercise of the power conferred upon the minister by section 2 (2) of the Office of Utilities Regulation Act, the following Order is hereby made:-

“(1) This Order may be cited as the Office of Utilities Regulation (Amendment of First Schedule to the Act) Order, 2014.

(2) The first schedule to the Office of Utilities Regulation Act is amended by – (a) deleting item 2; and (b) renumbering items 3, 4 and 5, respectively … dated this 13th day of June 2014.”

This has become the norm in the House, where the members “rubber-stamp” orders from ministers, giving it the House affirmation that it needs. No questions are asked. No clarification is given.

In this case, in order to find out what was being deleted from the OUR Bill, the press had to download a copy of the OUR Regulation Act and turn to the First Schedule to find out what was happening.

The Act points out that the minister may, subject to a negative resolution in Parliament, amend the schedule by issuing an order.

The First Schedule lists the five utilities which the OUR regulates, as follows: (1) provision of telecommunications services; (2) provision of public passenger transportation by road, rail or ferry; (3) the provision of sewerage services; (4) generation, transmission, distribution and supply of electricity; and (5), the supply and distribution of water.

So, by deleting item 2 in the First Schedule, based on the order issued and gazetted by the prime minister on June 13, the regulation of the public transportation system was immediately removed from under the OUR, and the order eventually received the required affirmative response from the House of Representatives five days later.

It may come as a surprise to many Jamaicans that the regulatory authority of the OUR could be so easily removed by the prime minister or a minister, without the majority of MPs even realising what they had affirmed. However, the prime minister does have that right under the Act.

But it raises questions about how slippery is the OUR’s regulatory handle on things like the supply of electricity and how easily it could be removed, if the Government is advised that it would be in the best interest of procuring an investor for the proposed 381-megawatt energy plant, for example.

It makes us wonder, how much control the OUR really has over these utilities that it purports to control? It also raises the questions, how much homework do the parliamentarians do when they are given these documents to affirm?

What smells though, is the fact the order was gazetted less than three weeks before the transport operators and their lawyer, Hugh Wildman, were scheduled to attend the Supreme Court to have their three applications for judicial review heard.

The operators are challenging policy decisions taken by the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), including creating a dedicated lane for its buses using the Mandela Highway. They claim that the actions being taken against them are illegal, and are causing them economic hardship and that the authority to do so rests in the OUR.

Well, the fact is that, gentlemen, the authority no longer rests in the OUR. But the big question is, where does it rest now?