Warmington pushes for SDC funds owed to MPs
Everald Warmington is pressing Members of Parliament (MPs) who sit on the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) Committee, which he chairs, to move a motion for an amendment to the upcoming national budget that would allow the finance ministry to tack on more than $100 million owed by the Social Development Commission (SDC) to MPs.
Warmington has suggested that MPs make the move when the estimates of expenditure for 2017/2018 go before the standing finance committee, after it is tabled on February 9.
Between 2001 and 2012 the SDC, as the main implementing agency for CDF projects across constituencies, had used some of those funds to offset its own recurrent expenses, expecting that the finance ministry would have eventually refunded the amounts.
But to date, the liability still remains on the SDC’s books, and the committee has been clamouring for the Ministry of Finance to tidy up that situation.
Warmington stressed, to seemingly hesitant MPs, that this was the final opportunity to recoup the funds, and that he, as a state minister, could not move such a motion himself.
“This is the last chance you’re getting and this is the last time I’m going to speak about it. It doesn’t go down well if I move the motion. They would expect that a minister shouldn’t come here and force his minister to make an amendment, but naturally, I can vote for it. I expect all of us, whether minister or non-minister, to support the thing,” he said.
Warmington suggested that this approach may finally resolve the issue, as promises by the local government minister to approach the Ministry of Finance, with a view to having the allocation made in the supplementary budget, had not been fulfilled.
“They have millions of dollars for each MP… those funds have accumulated and we have been on it for many years for those funds to be refunded… and we always get the same runaround,” he argued.
“So I am almost certain that it is not included in what is going to be laid here on February 9. My encouragement to members is to ask for amendment to the finance committee meeting,” Warmington insisted.
He said the figure is “substantial”, putting it at $180 million. But head of the commission, Dr Dwayne Vernon, has sought to clarify that claim.
He explained to the
Jamaica Observer yesterday that while the debt has surpassed $100 million, what is actually owed does not amount to $180 million, since about $45 million of the total are those funds that are being held for projects being implemented by the SDC.
This is not the first time the matter has come up at Gordon House. In December 2015 the matter was raised before the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee. Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Local Government Denzil Thorpe explained then that the monies owed are long-standing liabilities, and that the SDC’s accounts are now healthy.
“The SDC is fully operating within the funds that are provided and all the projects are up to date. We are not in a position now where that’s happening. Everything is current now,” he said. At the time, Thorpe said the amount owed was $136 million, up to 2011. Balances for CDF projects are usually remitted to the project consultants.