PM Says Gov’t Will be ‘Doing Plenty with Little’ this Year

Prime Minister, the Hon. Bruce Golding, said last night (Aug.12) that the 2009/2010 Supplementary Estimates, which will be tabled in Parliament early in September, will be about “doing plenty with little.”
“When we present the Supplementary Estimates early in September, we are going to outline where we have to cut,” Mr. Golding told a huge crowd at his Town Hall Meeting at the B.B. Coke High School in Junction, St. Elizabeth.
“Because we have had to be cutting back, I have had to say to my Ministers, that you are going to have to do plenty with little.I have had to say to them read your bible. You must find a way to take five loaves and two fishes and go and feed the multitude, because we have no choice,” the Prime Minister said.
“Things are tough, but I am driving the Ministers; I am saying to them, you have to use your brains, you have to try and see how you can spend the money to get the maximum benefit out of it,” he added.
Mr. Golding said that some of the things that have to be done include cutting out corruption and the “thievin”, because too much of that was still taking place.
“We have to cut out the amount of waste that is taking place. We are not getting a dollar of value for every dollar that we spending,” he noted.
Citing an example of what he termed “questionable returns on Government expenditure”, Mr. Golding said that the Government currently spends $1.1 million every year on each child in its children’s homes, compared to an average of $300,000 per child per year in private children’s homes.
“And yet, despite that kind of expenditure, when you go to the (Government) children’s homes, the conditions are poor, the place is shabby, they are not eating well, they are not being looked after properly,” he commented.
He said this information came out of meetings with managers of some 85 Homes, since the recent Armadale home fire.
“This is one of the areas that we will have to tighten up on, because we run you down to take your taxes from you. If we are going to squeeze the taxes out of you, we have a responsibility to make sure that the taxes are properly spent,” Mr. Golding said.