Renu­ka Singh

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and req­ui­site school clo­sures led to an un­used Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) al­lo­ca­tion of $81.6 mil­lion in 2020.

That cred­it was added to the $400 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for 2021 which meant some $481.6 mil­lion was avail­able for GATE fund­ing.

Both Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Nigel De­Fre­itas were forced to re­mind two pre­vi­ous speak­ers about the nar­row am­bits of the Fi­nance (Vari­a­tion of Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) Bill which was de­bat­ed yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate.

Im­bert said that even though the de­tails of the de­bate were cir­cu­lat­ed to Sen­a­tors, they seemed to mis­un­der­stand that mon­ey was tak­en from sev­er­al min­istries but on­ly the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

“I just want to make the point that in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ed to ho­n­ourable sen­a­tors re­gard­ing the trans­fer of funds be­tween sub-heads has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the mat­ter be­fore the Sen­ate,” Im­bert said.

He al­so cor­rect­ed the record about fund­ing be­ing re­moved from the Min­istry for Agri­cul­ture to sup­ple­ment the oth­er heads. The de­bate yes­ter­day looked at the Ju­di­cia­ry, the Per­son­nel De­part­ment and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

“No mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, no mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry of Health, no mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry Agri­cul­ture or any of the Min­istries men­tioned in the doc­u­ment that gave for the in­for­ma­tion of the Sen­a­tors,” Im­bert said.

“What we are about to­day (yes­ter­day) is look­ing at the trans­fer of funds from six sub-items in sub-head 18, the Min­istry of Fi­nance on­ly,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said that mon­ey was on­ly tak­en from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and “nowhere else.”

“The con­tri­bu­tion of Sen­a­tor Ly­der was com­plete­ly un­war­rant­ed, un­found­ed, base­less and with­out any mer­it what­so­ev­er,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said that when he lis­tened to some con­tri­bu­tions by some Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, he won­dered if they were aware of the pan­dem­ic.

“In 2021, there were a num­ber of re­stric­tions that af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions,” he said ex­plain­ing the in­crease in GATE.

He said that the ex­cess fund­ing could now be re-de­ployed in­to fund­ing so­cial grants and pen­sion.

“But at no time was there thou­sands of stu­dents be­ing de­nied as­sis­tance for GATE. That is just pre­pos­ter­ous. All of the re­quire­ments for GATE all of the fund­ing for GATE for fis­cal 2021 was sat­is­fied,” he said. The in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to the Ju­di­cia­ry, Im­bert said, is to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions. Im­bert said that, while all Min­istries have been di­rect­ed to live with­in their al­lo­ca­tion and man­age its ex­pens­es, the Ju­di­cia­ry, Per­son­nel De­part­ment and So­cial De­vel­op­ment need­ed more al­lo­ca­tions.