JUST OVER $500,000 has been allocated to the St. Thomas Parish Council for housing assistance.
However the three Jamaica Labour Party councillors in the parish have charged that none of the money has been allocated to them.
Now they are demanding that Morant Bay Mayor Owen Atkinson re-constitute the Finance Committee, which Councillor Derrick Hamilton, one of the JLP's deputy general secretaries, says is 100 per cent PNP (Peoples National Party).
The mayor has however defended his decision to allocate funds to the PNP divisions, saying that the money was "given to councillors as the need arose" and was based on the "representations made by each councillor" .
The Mayor explained that the housing assistance covers small repairs among other things and posited that perhaps the JLP divisions were not given funds because their councillors "did not make a case that showed that they needed it".
Meanwhile, insurers are to pay some $300,000 to the St. Thomas Parish Council to replace the Council's mayoral chain, which has been missing since last March.
Mayor Atkinson, told The Gleaner that the claim was being settled. "I was reliably informed that the cheque was ready and could be picked up or would be dispatched to us shortly," he said.
The Mayor said he was still baffled as to the chain's disappearance and could not say for certain whether it was stolen.
Mayor Atkinson last wore the chain to the opening of the new session of Parliament at Gordon House on March 23, last year.
Mr. Atkinson said in May that after the function, he remembered taking the chain off and putting it in the glove compartment of his car. A week later, when a clerk at the Morant Bay Parish Council office asked about the chain, Councillor Atkinson remembered he had not removed it from the car, but when he checked the glove compartment, it was missing.
The Mayor is not sure whether the chain was removed in Kingston or St. Thomas or even how it left the car. Chains of rural mayors date back to the 1970s. Before that, only Kingston had a mayor and needed an official chain.
