DR. CHRIS Tufton, president of Generation 2000 (G2K), the young professionals group aligned to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), is urging the various stakeholders involved with the formation of a social partnership with the Government to insist on a more accountable and transparent system of governance as a pre-condition to engaging in any partnership agreement. According to Dr. Tufton, "History should have taught us that it is insufficient for this agreement to be based on 'a handshake and a promise', as the Government has over and over again breached its commitment to providing sound economic management, and in too many cases is outright corrupt, squandering the country's economic resources."
Speaking at a G2K-sponsored Town Hall meeting in Mandeville, Manchester recently, Dr. Tufton said the evidence is clear that this Government, to date, is the most fiscally indisciplined that the country has had in recent memory, with the consequence being a litany of failures and consequent hardships for Jamaicans. "They have failed in job creation, debt reduction, economic growth, quality of education and crime prevention, just to list a few," the G2K president said.
According to the G2K, the genesis of the country's debt burden, now at 150 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) or approximately $700 billion, up from $43 billion in 1991, is not difficult to trace. "The Government continues to consume more than it earns while failing to provide the environment to expand the productive base of the country as economic growth has been less than one per cent over the last decade."
In moving forward, the G2K president is calling on the unions and private sector leaders to insist of the Government commitments to constitutional amendments that will ensure that targets are set to lower the debt within a manageable percentage of GDP with a cap to prevent future imprudence, that limits are placed on future fiscal deficit, and an independent Central Bank.
Dr. Tufton also called for amendments to allow for a greater oversight role by the Opposition party by making it mandatory that a member of the Opposition chairs oversight committees of Parliament, as is the case with the Public Accounts Committee currently chaired by the Opposition spokesman on finance Audley Shaw.
Other such committee would be an appropriations committee, ethics committee and committees responsible for reviewing the performance of ministries. This, the G2K president says, would act as a constant check to Government's temptation to engage in waste and corruption by ensuring a mechanism to expose such type of indiscretions.
