CDF spending busted budget

While members of parliament (MPs) receive $20 million annually from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to spend primarily on social programmes in their constituencies, it has been revealed that St Andrew East Rural and St Catherine North Eastern received additional sums of more than $5 million each in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

St Andrew East Rural, whose MP was Damion Crawford at the time, received $25,174,614 in 2015-2016 while $25,490,951 was allocated to Leslie Campbell, the St Catherine North Eastern MP, in 2016-2017.

In a compliance audit of the CDF, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis reported that over the period 2015-2016 and 2019-2020, the CDF disbursed an additional sum of $85.39 million to 46 constituencies, which exceeded their approved budget.

In the 2016-2017 parliamentary year, St Andrew East Rural constituency came up on the auditor general’s radar again, with new MP, Juliet Holness, receiving $3,050,000 more than the approved $20 million, according to the audit that was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.

For 2016-2017, Portland Western MP Daryl Vaz received a CDF allocation of $21,221,505 while the constituency received $24,350,124 the following parliamentary year.

The man who chaired the CDF parliamentary committee for years, St Catherine South West MP Everald Warmington, received an additional $283,499 in 2015-2016, and the following year, $20.5 million was disbursed for projects in his constituency.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ St Andrew West Central constituency received $21.4 million in 2015-2016 and $22 million in 2016-2017.

OTHER EXCESSES

Opposition MP Lisa Hanna’s St Ann South East received $20,099,964 in 2017-2018 and $1,597,910 in excess funds for the 2019-2020 parliamentary period.

Clarendon Northern, whose then member of parliament was Horace Dalley, received additional sums amounting to $2,097,584 for the parliamentary years spanning 2015 to 2020.

For the parliamentary year 2015-2016, the late Hanover Eastern MP D.K. Duncan received an additional $592,469.

Former MP for Manchester Southern, Michael Stewart, got nearly $1 million more in 2017-2018 and the following year nearly $20.5 million.

For Kingston Eastern and Port Royal, MP Phillip Paulwell received an additional $248,400 from the CDF for the 2016-2017.

In its response to the audit, the Office of the Prime Minister and the CDF Programme Management Unit indicated that some of the excesses may be due to incorrect postings and refunded amounts that were subsequently redistributed.

The CDF management indicated that a comprehensive reconciliation is being undertaken to resolve the anomalies.

The CDF also said that the unit’s staff complement would be strengthened with the recruitment of a senior project officer for budgeting and accounting “whose primary responsibility will be to monitor and reconcile in a timely manner all CDF accounts, including those held by implementing MDAs (ministries, departments, and agencies)”.

For the five-year period 2015–2020, Parliament approved a total of $6.4 billion to cover administrative and other operating expenses of the CDF unit and provide grants to the 63 MPs for implementation of social programmes in their constituencies.

editorial@gleanerjm.com