KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP) is urging Prime Minister Andrew Holness to fulfil his commitment by establishing job descriptions for Members of Parliament (MP) before the next general elections.

JAMP, which issued the call in a media release on Thursday, said “Voters now face the prospect of selecting representatives without clear standards to evaluate either past performance or future performance. This leaves taxpayers in the position of being unable to hold MPs accountable, even as they are compelled to foot the bill for their salaries.”

“Following the controversial 2023 MP salary increases that occurred without performance metrics, the prime minister promised accountability mechanisms that would justify future compensation decisions. In the Parliament on June 20, 2023, the prime minister defended his policy to increase the salaries. He said, ‘Along with improved compensation, there must be a well-articulated and transparent performance measurement and accountability framework. The other side of the compensation reform is the implementation of the performance-based system and an accountability framework to be implemented in the next two years.”

“Since that commitment, draft job descriptions for Members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers were tabled, a Joint Select Committee was established, two public consultations and two committee meetings were convened. However, since the deadline for public submissions elapsed in December 2023, 15 months have elapsed with no meetings for public review,” JAMP said.

The watchdog agency said it has since commissioned a public survey, which assessed citizens’ understanding of parliamentary responsibilities, particularly as they relate to corruption prevention, in which 1,757 Jamaicans participated.

The findings revealed that the majority believed that MP’s monitoring public spending was more important than creating laws; ensuring that the Government implements the recommendations from watchdog agency (Auditor General, Integrity Commission) reports was a priority above other functions; the biggest obstruction to Parliamentarians being effective in fighting corruption would be the direct benefits that an MP and their associates obtain from corrupt acts; and, if one had to make a choice, a focus on national projects and programmes was more important than the MP’s focus on local constituency development.

The survey also exposed very significant knowledge gaps, in which 75 per cent of respondents had little to no familiarity with parliamentary committees responsible for combating corruption, while 73 per cent were unfamiliar with anti-corruption legislation.

JAMP expressed concerns that the draft job descriptions disproportionately focus on constituency work, particularly the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), which represents only one per cent of the national budget, in contrast to parliamentary oversight functions that would address the remaining 99 per cent.

“The aim is not to reduce the attention being paid to the CDF but to have the job description capture the MP’s role of robust parliamentary oversight and policy-making on behalf of their constituents,” said Jeanette Calder, executive director of JAMP.