MP locked out!

Eight months after defeating the People’s National Party (PNP) candidate Dr Walton Small to take the St James South seat, Homer Davis is lamenting that he and his office are still being denied access to a training centre in the community of Cambridge.

The building, an abandoned Public Works office, was rehabilitated and refurbished under the stewardship of the PNP’s Derrick Kellier, former member of parliament (MP), with money from his Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allocation.

It was being used by the HEART/NSTA Trust to train workers for the hospitality sector. However, since defeating Small, who took over caretakership for the PNP after Kellier retired from politics, Davis said that his efforts to build on the legacy of the former agriculture minister have been stifled.

“Ever since I became member of parliament, we have been trying to get access to that building but we have been told that the South St James Social Economic Development Trust, of which Derrick Kellier and his political operatives, are [sic] the members,” Davis complained to Tuesday’s meeting of the Constituency Development Fund Committee at Gordon House.

“I expected that the transition would be seamless, but there is a level of resistance and I don’t know how long it will last for, but I have asked the National Land Agency to intervene and I have reported it to the CDF office.

Davis, a former mayor of Montego Bay, said that strong resistance is coming from political activists loyal to Kellier who have insisted that the trust members are the legal owner/operators of the facility, based on a lease agreement.

A check by The Gleaner found that the directors of the trust include Kellier, along with Hugh Solomon, Rudolph Scarlett, Milton Stewart, Howard Wright, Glendon Harris, and Leslie Fletcher.

However, head of the Constituency Development Fund Programme Management Unit, Kedesha Campbell, who promised to investigate the matter, told parliamentarians that there could be no legal basis for such an agreement.

“I want to be said that we enter no private arrangements with any persons. It is always government-owned, whether the property belongs to the National Land Agency, the municipal corporation, so that agreement was between two government agencies,” said Campbell.

She continued: “And it should it be noted also that it was not delivered to the member of parliament, it was delivered to the constituency for the use of the constituency.”

VEHICLE FOR DEVELOPMENT

Harris has defended the value of the St James South Development Trust, saying it was a vehicle for development throughout the constituency.

Speaking with The Gleaner on Tuesday, he credited the organisation for 1,000 HEART Trust NSTA graduates who have become fully productive in the tourism sector.

“What they need to do is to go and plant their own seeds, develop those, and get some other things running in it,” he said.

Harris, who is also a former mayor of Montego Bay, offered an olive branch on Tuesday, saying the trust would be willing to meet with Davis and forge a cooperation agreement.

“Politics or no politics, things must go on. You can’t be putting politics into the educating of our young people, giving them facilities for sports development, and that kind of thing … ,” he said.

Chairman of the CDF Committee, Juliet Holness, said that there was need for a mechanism to address the long-standing problem of political activists taking over the administration of communal facilities. She said that she was now faced with resolving utility and other bills in her own St Andrew East Rural constituency.

“It is a constant problem to pay the light bill. Like the resource centre I took over, they were stealing light for years, so by the time I got there, I have a bill for $800,000,” the committee chairman said.

Holness, a two-term member of parliament, disclosed that persons started stealing fixtures as soon as the administration changed in the 2016 general election.

“It is the Government’s property. It is not ours, and no matter how much we have put in it or how we have made it more beautiful than it was before, it is not the member of parliament’s property, it belongs to the community,” she declared.

Portland Eastern Member of Parliament Ann-Marie Vaz supported Holness, acknowledging her own reservations about investing in these facilities without safeguards.

“I have the same situation,” she said.

The problem, Vaz said, stemmed from the tradition of many facilities falling into the hands of community development committees.

christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com