By Robert Hart, Staff Reporter
Shaw
AUDLEY SHAW, Opposition spokesman on finance, has accused the Government of another betrayal after last year's agreement to increase its funding of education to 15 per cent of the national budget over five years.
Mr. Shaw told The Gleaner on Wednesday that some critical areas in and related to education have been cut drastically in the first supplementary estimates for 2004/2005, which was tabled in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
SCHOOL FEEDING
PROGRAMME
Among those areas are the school feeding programme, which has been cut by $50 million, and the Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), which was cut by $100 million.
Though PATH is a programme under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, it is used to assist poor families with tuition fees and school book costs.
"Not only did they not honour the historic agreement, they are adding insult to injury," Mr. Shaw said, pointing out that nourishment is a key element in ensuring children are being taught in an acceptable learning environment.
Mr. Shaw also pointed to cuts in other areas such as buildings for early childhood education.
In April Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance and Planning, tabled the 2004/2005 budget, which touched off a firestorm when Opposition Leader Edward Seaga claimed that the nine per cent allocation to education was a "betrayal" of the Government's commitment last year to increase the allocation by one per cent each, ending at 15 per cent after five years.
HISTORIC AGREEMENT
The "historic agreement" was based on a motion brought before the House of Represen-tatives by Mr. Seaga just months earlier, and was expected to see the allocation to education in 2004/2005 increased from 10 per cent to 11 per cent.
In the 2004/2005 supplementary estimates, the allocation to education has been increased by about $410 million, but remains at around nine per cent of the total budget, which has been increased by $3.4 billion to $331.5 billion.
Mr. Shaw also said that the Government will have to explain a number of other increased costs, including the $4.6 billion jump in contingent payment on guaranteed loans which, according to the supplementary estimates, is based on "higher than projected contingent liability payments."
