While defending its decision to limit the consideration of the budget estimates to three days, the government yesterday passed a motion to extend the hours for the sittings on each day.
As a result, the Committee of Supply will now convene at 9.30am on Monday to consider the estimates and the day’s sessions will run until 11pm.
Government’s Chief Whip Amna Ally stated that the Business Committee of Supply met and discussed the issue and decided on extending the sittings on each day.
The decision came a day after government passed a previous motion to restrict the consideration of the budget estimates to three days, prompting accusations by the PPP/C that it seeking to avoid scrutiny of proposed spending under a larger budget and ministries.
However, Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman yesterday defended the decision and pointed to precedent.
“I have been in this house for 18 years… remembering that for all of the years that I was here, except for three when I was in the South, we always had the estimates considered in three days. It is not true to say that anyone is being muzzled,” Trotman told the House to the loud approval of fellow government members.
Trotman, who was Speaker of the 10th Parliament between 2011 and 2015, noted that the then opposition, which held the majority in that Parliament, had to move a motion in the name of Carl Greenidge and seconded by Khemraj Ramjattan to enable the consideration of the estimates beyond three days. For 20 years, save for 2011 to 2014, the opposition only had three days to consider the estimates. “That is the history and that is the record that must be spoken in this House…,” he stressed, before reading from records from 2008 which showed that three days were scheduled. “There is no fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh day,” he added.
