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Revamp current system of funding constituencies – Hanna

Published:Saturday | October 24, 2020 | 12:11 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer

People’s National Party (PNP) presidential candidate Lisa Hanna has said that if she should become prime minister of Jamaica, she will be seeking to make changes to how constituencies are funded.

“Those constituencies that are larger should get more of an allocation because geographically, they are just bigger. That is something that we can look at, and I think the Parliament needs to look at it very strategically,” she said in a Gleaner Editors’ Forum yesterday.

Hanna asserted that in order to give Jamaicans “true representation”, allocations must differ.

“If you live in a constituency in St James and you drive up into Anchovy or Welcome Hall, with the kinds of rains that we are having now, you are going to be overpowered by bush.”

She said that systems need to be in place to facilitate debushing year-round, possibly by the National Works Agency.

“So that a member of Parliament is not the person in charge of overseeing or recommending when and how their constituencies are taken care of from that perspective,” Hanna said.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com