Speeches in the National Assembly

Minister of Agriculture [Dr. Ramsammy]: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this motion. I believe as we present this motion we should acknowledge that work done by all of us in this Parliament and in previous Parliaments have made us, at this time, a much better Parliament than we started out with. So if we go through the First Parliament to the Tenth Parliament we have to acknowledge that we have a much stronger Parliament. And in terms of the principles of participation, in terms of the shared governance, this Parliament today stands much stronger than when we started out.  I think we ought to take note of that. Therefore, the intention of this motion is to continue the trend we had throughout our history as an independent Parliament, as we made improvements on each round.
I think sometimes that what we have in our mind and the words that come out give the wrong impression. I sincerely hope that what Mr. Ramjattan said about the staff is not what was in his head. [Interruption] I am giving you a way out Mr. Ramjattan. What came out of his mouth was not something that anyone of us wants to endorse. I do not know any staff of this National Assembly that is here, in terms of their position, because of a favour.        [Mrs. Backer: Why are we training them?]          Please, as I said, in all of our endeavours we train people. But I do not know that anyone was appointed because he/she was somebody’s favourite. That was clearly said by the Member. I am sure those were words he did not mean.
Having said that, this motion addresses two specific recommendations that were made through engagements of a number of persons including Mr. Bradford, Mr. Pender, Sir Michael Davies etcetera. I know this motion has good intention.       [Mr. Ramjattan: Thank you]       I would presume that. But sometimes the coordination is lacking. We have done a lot of work – at the select committee, at the Parliamentary Management Committee and through other dialogue which addressed these issues.
The recommendations made by these consultants and by others, and from our own select committees, have been debated over and over for a number of years. I have suggested some amendments, and these were not made with any kind of malice because I thought the Whereas clauses should capture the history of all the work we have done that lead us to these recommendations. I did not think the Whereas clauses… so the recommendations are friendly amendments.
Mr. Speaker: Dr. Ramsammy, are they circulated?
Dr. Ramsammy: There were circulated. These amendments were circulated a while back. They just give the history of all the things that occurred. These two matters as the Hon. Member Ramjattan identified have been the subject of recommendations made by Sir Michael Davies. The Eight Parliament, through a Special Select Committee, which I chaired, had considered the recommendations of Sir Michael Davies who had done the needs assessment report during the Seventh Parliament after being invited by the PPP/C Government. In a report from the special select committee the budgetary matter was listed as Recommendation No. 18, and the staff management/human resources management was Recommendation No. 19 from the addendum report of Sir Michael Davies. The special select committee had considered also the Bradford Report, the Fiduciary Oversight Report. There were two parts to the report. In the first part Recommendation 31 addressed this matter, and in the second part they were addressed in more detail in Recommendation No. 3 and Recommendation No. 21. The Special Select Committee had already recommended the adoption of these recommendations and had referred these matters to the Parliamentary Management Committee, to the Speaker and to the Clerk, to establish how these matters could be implemented. What this motion is asking for, the consideration of these matters by a Special Select Committee, a previous special select committee had already referred this matter to the Parliamentary Management Committee, the Speaker and the Clerk to consider how it might be done.
The second select committee that was established in the Ninth Parliament never completed its work. The PNC/R therefore needs to Report to this House what it did with the recommendations before we go any further. Indeed, in the meanwhile the inter-parliamentary party dialogue had agreed that it wants to review these recommendations and determine what progress we have made in agreeing to and implementing the various recommendations. In this regard the inter-parliamentary party dialogue had requested myself and the Hon. Member Ms. Teixeira to prepare a report on these recommendations – a status report on what progress we might have made or not made. That report was prepared and submitted, and at the last meeting we did look briefly at the status report.
There were 87 recommendations in all when the Sir Michael Davies Report, the Pender Advisory and the Bradford Report are combined. The Davies Report with its Addendum had 38 Recommendations. Just to put things in perspective, of those 38, 29 have been fully implemented. Therefore, when Mr. Ramjattan nonchalantly says that we consider these and do nothing about them it does not seem this is true. In any circumstances 29 out of 38 are fully implemented, and most of these are already in the Standing Orders we have been using. Seven more have been agreed to out of the 38. These seven have been agreed to and are being implemented. So whilst they might not be fully implemented they are being implemented. Only two recommendations are in the red, meaning that we have not yet agreed on how to implement them.
I can guarantee the Hon. Member that this select committee will end up at the same place. I am referring to how to implement, because we can only agree. We are not going to be able to determine the operational things. Those things have to be done at another level. That was done by the previous select committee. After having agreed, the matter was referred the Speaker, the Clerk and the Parliamentary Management Committee.
When we looked at the Fiduciary Oversight Report there were 41 Recommendations in two parts. There was a set of 20 Recommendations considered as PART I which were all agreed to by the Government and all came to the Parliament. In fact, it was agreed to by the Government at the time of the presentation of the report before it came to Parliament. In the first set there were 15 fifteen recommendations fully implemented out of the 20. Four are being implemented. One has not yet been implemented. Another one of these is one of the two that has been refereed, as I said, to the Parliamentary Management Committee; it relates to the Budget matter.
In the second part, 10 recommendations were made and seven were fully implemented. We reached agreements on the others. For the Pender Advisory there were eight of them; seven have been fully implemented and are in the Standing Orders. One more is being implemented. So of the 87 Recommendations 92% have been fully implemented or are being implemented and, whilst we may want to say not all have been implemented, I think under any circumstances that is not a bad record. That is something we should acknowledge. It is that we may want those that have not yet been implemented to be similarly implemented. I thought that we all got together and worked hard and for most of these things there was consensus. Most of these things we all agreed to unanimously sometimes, and these were placed in our Standing Orders or implemented in one form or another. Therefore, in presenting this motion I did not want it to come out in this House that recommendation were made by the people we hired and we talked by ourselves in the select committee and nothing is being done. A lot has been done; much has been done in fact. I think as a House we should acknowledge that. We have some accountability to our people.
When it comes to the two recommendations that have not been implemented as yet, a recommendation was made in the Eight Parliament for the Parliamentary Management Committee, the Speaker and the Clerk of the National Assembly to consider how they could be implemented and to make such a recommendation. That was never done. Those reports have never come to us. Sometimes we go into a territory and travel a road that makes things a lot more complicated. Knowing how a select committee works, Mr. Speaker, we are going to come back with the same recommendation for the Parliamentary Management Committee, the Clerk and the Speaker to make recommendations to us on how that might be done. In a select committee we cannot do that; we can agree that these things be done; we can consider how it might be done, but at the end of the day, we have to move it over to somebody or in this case a Parliamentary Management Committee to determine how that might be done.
Since the Eight Parliament we agreed to that and here we are in the Tenth Parliament; we want to go back to how we got here. We got here looking at these recommendations and suggesting a way of how we could decide on the operational mechanism and come back and tell how that might be done and that was never done. We want to go and revisit exactly the same pathway and that is my problem. My problem is that we want to go back; travel the same road and therefore get...
Mr. Speaker: Dr. Ramsammy, maybe you could guide as to why the previous recommendations were not implemented then.
Dr. Ramsammy: That I can. That is what I am asking for. For the Parliamentary Management Committee, the Speaker and the Clerk, who received those reports since the Eight Parliament and we never got back any answers towards that. So we revisited the thing again in the Ninth Parliament and we are revisiting again in the Tenth Parliament and I could assure you that we are going to pass it back in the same way.
I had asked that the amendments that I proposed, which simply includes how we got here, be supported and that the RESOLVED clause ask the Parliamentary Management Committee what the Speaker just asked me, which is, “what happened at the Parliamentary Management Committee?” because I do not know. So that is what...
Mrs. Backer: To ask the Parliamentary Management Committee what happened?
Dr. Ramsammy: Well to give us a report. This House needs a report.
Mr. Speaker, that would be my contribution to this motion. Thank you very much. [Applause]