Parliament committee votes ‘yes’ to cops, BOJ jointly addressing account holders’ losses

Chairman of the Economy and Production Committee, Dwight Sibblies, yesterday resisted a proposal by opposition lawmaker Fitz Jackson for the police to appear alongside Bank of Jamaica officials to discuss losses suffered by account holders at banks and other deposit-taking institutions.

After insisting that the police should be invited to field questions from the committee, Jackson’s proposal was eventually put to a vote, and the result ended in a two-to-one decision in favour of the recommendation.

Yesterday’s committee meeting was intended to be a straightforward process of deciding on the resource persons and dates for them to attend the sitting to deliberate on a motion moved by Jackson earlier this year.

However, the sitting became testy at times, with the chairman insisting that he would stick to the letter of the motion, which called for the central bank to convene a meeting with the Bank of Jamaica to investigate the magnitude of the losses to account holders, the banks, and other financial institutions.

While not ruling out inviting the members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to assist the committee in its deliberations, Sibblies argued that the central bank officials would first attend the sitting, and if there was need to gather additional information from the police, that would be allowed at a later meeting.

“I am going to ask that we allow the Bank of Jamaica to come and give us the information (for) which we ask. If we need the JCF, it’s premature because I know all of these banks do have investigative units and they would have written several reports,” Sibblies said.

“Let us wait until the Bank of Jamaica is here and we ask the questions, and from that, we can know how to move forward,” he insisted.

However, both Jackson and Anthony Hylton disagreed with this approach, urging the chairman not to take a “defensive posture” but to invite the BoJ and police to the same meeting to allow for greater efficiency in the use of parliamentary time.

“When there are losses through fraud, that’s a criminal activity, so we can’t address that element of it without involving the JCF. When these losses are incurred by the customers, the banks send them to the police to report it,” Jackson explained.

He noted that for the committee to get a full grasp of the issues surrounding the losses incurred by customers and related activities “we cannot have deliberations without having the JCF giving us their perspectives”.

Squabble over meeting date

The committee also struggled to settle on a date for its next meeting after members squabbled over an April 18 date that was available but had to be put to a vote as the chairman indicated that he could not attend that sitting.

Jackson suggested that with a membership of nine and a quorum of three, the committee could appoint another member to chair the meeting in the absence of Sibblies.

However, the committee voted along party lines with two government members voting against the April 18 date for a sitting while two opposition members voted in favour. The chairman broke the deadlock with a casting vote against the April 18 date.

The committee later settled for May 1 and May 8 to have its next meetings.

Earlier during its deliberations, Hylton chided the leadership of Parliament over its poor record in holding meetings of the Economy and Production Committee, noting that its last sitting before yesterday was in March 2023.

He argued that one of the reasons given by the Government for removing the chairmanship of the select committees from the parliamentary Opposition and replacing them with members of the governing party was that the committees had not been meeting on a regular basis.

Prior to Sibblies’ appointment as chairman, his predecessor was the current Speaker, Juliet Holness.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com