Parliament is expected to start its summer recess this week, with the final sitting of the House of Representatives for the session on Tuesday, and the Senate on Friday.

The closing session was highlighted by the annual Sectoral Debate, which was probably much more of a painful exercise than its predecessors, primarily due the ill-advised changes to the debate format which forced Cabinet ministers to ignore large portions of their speeches because of lack of time.

It will be interesting to see how the House of Representatives handles the Constituency Debate expected in the new session, likely to start late August.

The fact is that while the Sectoral Debate has been an annual feature of the House, the Constituency Debate is the new addition. It was obviously introduced to calm backbenchers who might have been angry with the reduced opportunity to express their views.

But it is not only the debate which was malfunctioning last week. An electricity/power problem, which has not been explained up to now, has been plaguing meetings since last week.

An important meeting of the Economy and Production Committee on Thursday had to be concluded prematurely due to the flickering lights and the inability of Parliament’s standby unit to power the air conditioning inside the chamber.

Things sunk to a new low on Friday, when president of the Senate, Tom Tavares Finson, had to allow members, including the women, to remove their jackets.

Leader of Government Business Senator Kamina Johnson Smith was piloting a Bill to amend the Children (Guardianship and Custody) Act, which aims at retrieving children abducted and taken to foreign addresses by relatives, including mothers and father in aborted relationships.

Most windows and doors to the building were flung wide open, including the door to the prestigious chamber, with the noise of car horns often floating across the chamber while contributors spoke. However, despite the inconvenience, it is interesting that members sat for almost five hours on a single Bill that was not even controversial.

Actually, the Bill is a relic of the previous Administration, but its progenitor, Senator Mark Golding (Opposition), seems to have suddenly lost favour with it and wants a number of amendments.

Senator Johnson Smith, who is both leader of Government Business and minister of foreign affairs and foreign Trade, took charge of the Bill when the members finally decided to enter the heatwave with very little improvement in the climate. But maybe the heat got under the collar of some members resulting in almost 300 minutes of debate, amendments and refusals to amend, and eventually a call from Opposition Senator Lambert Brown for a “divide”.

The useless “divide” resulted in nine of the 13 members still in the chamber voting as Government to approve the Bill, and the four Opposition members voting against. Seven members were absent.

It seemed really strange that a Bill which merely gives effect to the previous Government’s decision to enact legislation to protect children from international abduction under the Hague Convention should have created such an animated debate just five months into new government, which is now completing the process.

The Bill is likely to be debated in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, as the Government Senators insisted on completing the process and having it passed by both Houses before the end of the current session.

*** Inside the House of Representatives, the agenda listed four statements to be made by the Government at the sitting. However, Prime Minister (PM) Andrew Holness did not make a statement.

It was expected that Holness’s statement would have had something to do with the visit of Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley, who was in the island on a four-day official visit. However, since that did not happen, it is possible that the PM may make a statement in the House next Tuesday. But the public’s appetite for news on the highlights of the visit may have already been satisfied with the joint statement read to the media by the PM at Jamaica House on Thursday.

The three statements which were made were from: Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw on his recent overseas investor-oriented “road shows”; Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck on the performance of the Administrator General’s Department, which may have raised the question as to why the Auditor General keeps finding so many flaws in the work of the department, if it is doing so well; and Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton’s update on Government’s efforts to contain the threat of ZIKV and other viruses threatening summer activities.

*** Minister of Labour and Social Security Shahine Robinson also made a statement, introducing a Bill to amend the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) Act, to reduce the period between actuarial reviews of the fund from five to three years.

Robinson’s introduction of this Bill was much needed, because for some time now both the media and the public have been at a loss to understand the contradicting views being expressed by the Government and the actuaries on the health of the National Insurance Fund (NIF), which funds the scheme.

The last Actuarial Report (2014) made available to the parliamentarians stated that the NIS was “in an untenable position”.

The report, which resulted from the review done by Eckler Jamaica, stated that assuming investment returns of 8.5 per cent per annum, and only modest increases in current flat rates paid by the pensioners, the accumulated fund, which then stood at $63.5 billion, could not cover the liability for benefits for the current list of pensioners alone.

“In fact, the fund is only around 50 per cent of the liability for benefits for just the current pensioners, and this ignored the NI Gold and all expenses related to the operations of the fund,” the report stated.

It also added that individuals already eligible for pension who have not yet claimed benefits were estimated to due $17 billion, which was excluded from the sum for total liabilities.

However, despite that warning, former Minister of Finance and Planning Dr Peter Phillips informed the House of Representatives a year later (March 2015) that the National Insurance Fund (NIF) would remain viable, despite the concerns raised about its sustainability.

Dr Phillips, who was closing the 2015/16 Budget Debate, confirmed that the actuarial review had been done to assess the sustainability of the pension fund in the medium- to long-term period. However, he said that the Government was reviewing the study to determine how to phase the implementation of the recommendations.

NIS benefits are funded by the NIF. The NIS is a compulsory social security scheme for workers, which provides financial protection to its contributors and their families against loss of income arising from injury on the job, incapacity, retirement or death.

It also has maternity allowance for domestic workers, a health plan for all contributors, grant for funeral, widow and widower’s pensions, and an orphan’s allowance.

It is quite likely that the decision to reduce the number of years between the actuarial reviews came out of that review of the report by the previous Government. In any case, Minister Robinson did not take credit for the decision. However, the public must be concerned that it took governments so many years to respond to the actuary’s warning of an impending crisis.