Despite his appointment to the Shadow Cabinet of the Opposition People’s National Party as spokesperson for National Security, Member of Parliament for St Catherine South Fitz Jackson has expressed his “unswerving” commitment to his lobby for an amendment to the controversial Banking Services Act.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Thursday, Jackson declared his resolve to continue the fight.

“I have taken on additional responsibilities, not alternate responsibilities; the same energy, the same attention, the same deliberate consistency will remain until that Banking Bill is passed and the ordinary person, the Jamaican businessman, and every Jamaican can keep their money in the bank in their account and it’s not unfairly taken away by the fees,” he said.

“I will never resile from that. If I should ever resile from that it would be a betrayal of my own conscience and I cannot afford to do that, I want to sleep at nights.”

Jackson in May withdrew the Bill from Parliament’s Order Paper citing delays it suffered in Parliament despite the opening of the debate in January.

He also noted that the Bill would be withdrawn to accommodate the comments and recommendations made by stakeholders and urged the Government to treat with the retabled Bill as it does other important proposed laws.

While warning at the time that the bill was not terminated, Jackson revealed that he would be filing a lawsuit against financial institutions that take fees from dormant accounts.

“People have suffered, their lives have been made miserable by the actions of these banks and so damages must come into play,” he said at the time, labelling the dormancy fee a breach of the current banking law.

When asked of the time frame for the bill’s reintroduction, the newly elected Chairman of the PNP expressed the hope that it will be soon to allow the bill’s circulation to bankers as he had promised.

“I had the redraft done because it was not satisfactory. Iit is now with Miss Hyacinth Lindsay, former Chief Parliamentary Counsel and she is working on it voluntarily and I expect it in short order. I will refrain from giving a time but I expect it to be very short. I would love for it to be last week,” he stated.

“I served notice when I withdrew the previous Bill, there is no need for a debate. [So if] it’s tabled this week, by next week we can pass it and put it into law as quickly as possible because the Jamaican depositors need their money to be saved. You can’t put your money in the bank for it to be safe but yet you lose it,” he said.