The gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion trad­ed ac­cu­sa­tions over who lacked the po­lit­i­cal will to ad­dress the na­tion’s most press­ing needs, as the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bat­ed the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s re­port dur­ing Tues­day evening’s sit­ting.

For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter and St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the new ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mid-year bud­get re­view gave the il­lu­sion of car­ing about chil­dren but of­fered lit­tle in terms of re­al fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment. Of the $3.14 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing, she said she found no clear al­lo­ca­tion for school vi­o­lence ini­tia­tives or crit­i­cal youth pro­grammes.

“In the al­lo­ca­tion in the re­port that we're dis­cussing, I saw noth­ing… for the com­ple­tion of youth camps, for ex­pand­ing Mi­LAT and MY­PART pro­grammes and con­tin­u­ing the CCC. I saw none of that,” she said, adding that she was “ex­pect­ing that those pro­grammes are ful­ly fund­ed.”

She said the is­sue of school vi­o­lence had been a long-stand­ing one and ar­gued that, un­der the PNM, there were tar­get­ed re­spons­es: the de­ploy­ment of restora­tive prac­ti­tion­ers, school so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, and teacher train­ing in iden­ti­fied schools of fo­cus.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said $455.1 mil­lion of the new al­lo­ca­tion will go to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, but claimed most of it is ear­marked for out­stand­ing bills left by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath’s con­tri­bu­tion ear­li­er in the week.

She lament­ed the lack of sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in school re­pairs and up­grades, and ques­tioned whether there was gen­uine po­lit­i­cal will to im­prove con­di­tions. She al­so crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment’s stu­dent lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme, claim­ing it lacked a means test and risked ex­clud­ing poor­er fam­i­lies from book grants. She urged the gov­ern­ment to re­store the qual­i­fy­ing in­come thresh­old for book grants to $10,000.

“I call on the UNC to put the thresh­old for the book grants back to $10,000 and al­low more chil­dren to get the book grant that vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren need,” she said, ac­cus­ing the gov­ern­ment of low­er­ing it to $8,000. She al­so called for clar­i­ty on when par­ents would re­ceive the grant ahead of the new school year.

Gads­by-Dol­ly added that if the gov­ern­ment could spend $750,000 on the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment, it could find funds to meet chil­dren’s ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion­al needs.

But Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen of­fered a sim­i­lar ac­cu­sa­tion in re­turn. She said that re­cent flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts showed the state al­ready had the nec­es­sary tools to re­spond—what was miss­ing, she said, was the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s will­ing­ness to use them.

“While we are out there in wa­ter up to our waist, up to our neck, fight­ing up, I am amazed that… we were able to at­tend to flood mit­i­ga­tion like nev­er be­fore with­out spend­ing an ad­di­tion­al cent,” Ameen said.

She said when they en­coun­tered wa­ter­cours­es with trees grow­ing in­side, it was clear: “That didn’t grow overnight. It meant that for 10 years the for­mer gov­ern­ment did not clear those wa­ter­cours­es.”