The Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Barton Scotland needs training in order to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny of public expenditure, according to Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo, who says ministers of government also need to be more responsive to questions posed by the opposition.
Speaking at a news conference last week at his Queenstown, Georgetown office, Jagdeo said that he met with a Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) team which expressed a desire do a training project to improve the skills of local Members of Parliament (MPs) in interrogating public expenditure.
He said while he supports such a project and the opposition MPs will attend, he told the CDB team that if the goal is greater transparency, it was not the lack of training of MPs that have led to less accountability or less transparency in the Parliament. “The Speaker himself needs to be trained to understand public expenditure and linkages and to give enough time for proper interrogation of public expenditure,” he said.