Nadaleen Singh

Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­bate the pro­posed $410 mil­lion Con­stituen­cy De­vel­op­ment Fund (CDF) dur­ing the cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary term, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan has said. In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said all ex­pen­di­ture of tax­pay­ers' funds is sub­ject­ed to bud­getary ap­proval and "the Par­lia­ment will have a chance to de­bate the $410 mil­lion in the up­com­ing bud­get."

The fund was first an­nounced by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing in ear­ly Au­gust and has since stirred de­bate in the pub­lic do­main. Ram­bachan said in the state­ment that the fund is "not a gov­ern­ment de­vel­op­ment plan" but al­lows all mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to ac­cess $10 mil­lion each to im­ple­ment projects on be­half of their con­stituents and for projects cho­sen in con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple.

Com­ment­ing on whether the fund would be used to gain po­lit­i­cal points, es­pe­cial­ly as lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions are up­com­ing, he said: "The peo­ple of To­ba­go are prin­ci­pled and are very au courant with the is­sues of gov­er­nance. As well, they have a good un­der­stand­ing of which po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty will best be able to ad­vance the in­ter­ests of To­ba­go."

Ram­bachan sug­gest­ed if it is an elec­tion tool, it will be used by the elec­torate to judge their Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. "This crit­i­cism does not hold wa­ter since it is spread across the board and ben­e­fits all MPs," he said. "If it is an elec­tion tool it is be­cause the con­stituents will be able to de­ter­mine from the use of the funds how well their prob­lems have been ad­dressed. This means that the fund will cause MPs to be mea­sured on ef­fi­cien­cy, ef­fec­tive­ness, re­spon­sive­ness and con­stituen­cy man­age­ment."

Re­spond­ing to the sug­ges­tion that the funds should be put in­to the hands of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions or the Self­help Com­mis­sion, Ram­bachan said: "These or­gan­i­sa­tions have their func­tions de­mar­cat­ed in the laws which gov­ern what they do." He said while the Gov­ern­ment em­braces pub­lic scruti­ny, "it al­so has to take the de­ci­sion to move on with its de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in the in­ter­est of im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life of peo­ple every­where