Par­lia­ment ap­proved a mo­tion and leg­is­la­tion to in­crease the 2012/13 na­tion­al bud­get by more than $2.8 bil­lion short­ly be­fore 8 am yes­ter­day at the end of an 18-hour sit­ting, which be­gan at 1.30 pm on Wednes­day.When the vote was tak­en, the eight Op­po­si­tion MPs present in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed against the mea­sure. It was passed with the sup­port of the 18 gov­ern­ment MPs present.

In his con­tri­bu­tion in the wee hours of yes­ter­day, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Amery Browne raised an is­sue of gov­ern­ment lease and main­te­nance of a ve­hi­cle at a cost of $1 mil­lion to trans­port of­fi­cials of the Hoop of Life ini­tia­tive."I don't know what they are us­ing trans­port­ing these Hoop of Life of­fi­cials.What ve­hi­cle is that? It is a lease for $1 mil­lion," Browne said.Browne al­so said he want­ed to know why the Mor­vant/Laven­tille ini­tia­tive to re­duce crime did not in­volve any non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion."Spend­ing an ad­di­tion­al $8 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey with­out the di­rect in­volve­ment of a sin­gle NGO," he added.

He al­so spoke about an ad­di­tion­al $176 mil­lion for the pur­chase of four he­li­copters. He called on Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai to pro­vide the an­swers. "We are ask­ing for de­tails," Browne in­sist­ed.The for­mer so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter al­so want­ed to know why it was nec­es­sary for the US to grant ap­proval for a project in T&T.Browne said the project in­volved the es­tab­lish­ment of five ware­hous­es for the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) "to store ma­te­r­i­al to save cit­i­zens' lives."He asked: "What on earth is this about? Why do we need (US) State De­part­ment ap­proval for any fa­cil­i­ty–ware­house or oth­er­wise–in the sov­er­eign na­tion of T&T?"

In wind­ing up the de­bate, Howai said he did not have all the de­tails about the project which re­quired the ap­proval of the State De­part­ment. He said, how­ev­er, the US ap­proval was with re­spect to a do­na­tion of some CKD kits for con­struc­tion. He said that arrange­ment had to be con­firmed as it was not clear­ly stat­ed in the doc­u­ment.Deal­ing with the so-called $1 mil­lion lease for a ve­hi­cle, Howai said the doc­u­ment should re­fer to ve­hi­cles and not just one ve­hi­cle.On the pro­posed $10 mil­lion in­crease in fund­ing for the con­sti­tu­tion re­form con­sul­ta­tions host­ed by the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry, Howai said the orig­i­nal cost was was $20 mil­lion and the cost to date was $7 mil­lion."The ac­tu­al pay­ment made on the cost was $4 mil­lion," he told leg­is­la­tors yes­ter­day morn­ing. Howai said the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to ex­tend the con­sul­ta­tions.