EDITORIAL - Family feeding at the CDF trough

Say what you wish about Mr Everald Warmington - and there is plenty negative to be said - he does have a way of bringing a party-halting honesty to the fete, as he did last week with his revelation about the family feast taking place at the CDF feeding trough.

The CDF, or the Constituency Development Fund, is that political pork barrel about which this newspaper has previously complained and around which MPs circle the wagons at the first sign of danger.

In the current fiscal year, $1.2 billion, or an average $20 million per riding, is allocated to the CDF, which parliamentarians can tap for ostensible development projects in their constituencies.

Supposedly, a monitoring unit in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) ensures the approved projects, which first should pass muster at a parliamentary committee chaired by Mr Warmington, meet the established criteria for the CDF programmes and that there is accountability to the process. In other words, the people at Jamaica House should help ensure that taxpayers get value for their money and prevent "leakages" when it comes to the management of government resources.

But we know of pork's addictive effect on politicians, how slurpingly drooling they are around the stuff, and how possessively controlling they become over it. It is their hands that must drip from doling greasy bits of rind and fat.

In essence, the CDF is viewed in the constituencies as the MPs' scheme. The truth is, for all the high-minded defence of the programme by politicians and its oversight agency at the OPM, it is effectively a trough from which MPs not only distribute the pork but place their personal stamp on it, like the ones abattoirs use to certify the quality of their meat. Formal state agencies are thus bypassed.

It is easier, too, in such circumstances for people to circumvent the rules and/or make up their own, as appeared to be the case that came to light last October in which Natalie Neita-Headley started a road project in her constituency before she knew the money was forthcoming. Now, there is Mr Warmington's recent disclosure about apparent nepotism in the hiring by MPs of relatives and in-laws as consultants on CDF projects.

Passing the buck

At least two cases of such behaviour have been reported, but our information suggests there could be 16 or more. Mr Warmington quipped last week: "I wonder why these people believe they must use their relatives."

We, in the first instance, wonder why consultants, who have eaten up 7.5 per cent of the CDF budget, are required in the first place. What is worse is the buck-passing posture adopted by the CDF monitoring unit regarding who is responsible for this greasy state of affairs. It has no role, it says, in hiring consultants.

The concern over poor oversight of the CDF is not ours alone. It is shared by the Office of the Contractor General, which noted in its 2009 report that the CDF unit had failed to police the scheme in accordance with its own operating procedures, and that implementing agencies routinely procured goods and services outside the Government's procurement procedures.

Our suggestion: smash the CDF pork barrel and remove the trough.

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