Online feedback

Below are edited excerpts from comments posted online at www.jamaica-gleaner.com by readers to yesterday's lead story 'MP spending spree - CDF Christmas payouts overboard but politicians resist cap'.

Misleading report

This is another misleading caption by The Gleaner. Each member of parliament (MP) is given a fixed Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allocation. To suggest that spending was overboard would give the impression that MPs were hitting their limits on the CDF.

The fact that this meeting happened 24 days before Christmas means it would have been ludicrous to ask for changes at that time. Any business you're in plans its expenditure at least a few months in advance. Politicians are no different.

I like the idea of the CDF because it brings some equity to the political pork - and in some ways limits it.

These minutes reflect the need for a more intelligent framework going forward. It's also clear that the Project Management Unit has no teeth.

- Free B

A monumental waste

If there is $1.2 billion to be shared equally among 60 members of parliament (MPs), you mean to tell me they can't plan what to do with the $20 million each will get? It's not as if they're getting this money and told to spend it within a month or else they would lose it. Clearly, these idiot MPs don't know how to spend/budget this money they were given, or else there'd be no need for them to spend more than they were given.

This is why the CDF is a monumental waste of taxpayers' money and the entire programme is a fraud. I agree with you that it is pork, but then that's all the more reason for this programme to be scrapped.

- TrevDiMan

It's a racket

The CDF funds is money going to the dons for control of the people in the constituencies. It is a continuation of the dons running the parties' operations in the communities. This project is a disguise.

To the ordinary eyes and ears, it sounds good, because that was the way it sounded to me when I first heard about it. But when the cost overruns began and efforts were made to ensure that such information did not get to the media and the Office of the Contractor General, then I came to the conclusion that there was more to the story. This is hush money for the control of the people in the communities.

- Jamericabiz