KINGSTON, Jamaica – Members of Parliament are not at liberty to discuss the issue of payment to Government contractors according to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Juliet Holness.

She made the declaration last Thursday as she chaired the sitting of the Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee that examined the 2025/26 Budget.

A seemingly agitated Holness made the remarks following statements from Opposition MPs, including the member for St Andrew South Western, Angela Brown-Burke, to the Minister of Works, Robert Morgan about supposed complaints from contractors about not being paid.

In his response to Brown-Burke, Morgan said “The challenge I’m having is when a contractor goes out there and does poor work and the NWA (National Works Agency) says we’re not paying for this and they go to the politician and complain and the politician elevates that to the national level without the benefit of why the person wasn’t paid”.

“I am not going to, as minister with responsibility, preside over payments to the contractors who have not given the taxpayers value for money,” Morgan said.

Brown-Burke shot back, stating that “I am not for one single second asking you to make payments that have not been validated. And let us also be very clear that Angela Rosemarie Brown-Burke is not sitting here before you asking you a question that I have not asked elsewhere and where I have not provided the information. And I can tell you that in that discourse I did not get any report of non-validation of issues with work or any of that”.

Morgan was about to respond when Holness intervened with “Member and minister I would like us to move on from this conversation because none of us as Members of Parliament are at liberty to be having any discussions about payments for contractors. That is not our role and function and it is actually improper to do so”.

Holness said contractors having a problem with non-payment should write to the NWA.

“And I will have this discussion with those Members of Parliament who do not appreciate this statement; it is a dangerous precedent for any Member of Parliament to engage in any discussions, negotiations, resolution of bills for any contractor, and it’s a definitive statement,” she declared.

“If you choose to continue down this line you do so at your own peril,” she warned.

Brown-Burke said she would desist from continuing down that road but insisted that “all of us in here should be concerned about how bills are paid by the Government. And I’m not talking about contractors [only]. I’m saying that how Government pays its bills should be important to all of us”.