The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

GRAND Bahamians know all to well that Minister for the island Michael Darville is “an idle minister with nothing to do,” FNM chairman Darron Cash charged yesterday.

He was responding to comments made by Dr Darville in the House of Assembly on Wednesday, when the Pineridge MP said an audit into the former administration’s Jump Start Programme revealed some recipients might have misused their grants.

According to media reports, Dr Darville said evidence suggested that “a lot of the funding was not policed properly” and called on Central Grand Bahama MP Neko Grant to bring the names of Bahamians who have benefited from Jump Start to Parliament.

In a statement released to the press yesterday, Mr Cash dubbed Dr Darville comments as “a classic example of the old bankrupt approach to governing in a modern Bahamas”.

He said: “Grand Bahamians know all too well that Minister Darville is an idle minister with nothing to do, so he makes work for himself with photo ops and ‘audits.’ He has no real power or portfolio and they know it.”

Details of any irregularities are only known to Dr Darville, Mr Cash said, so the FNM is in no position to directly respond.

“As Neko Grant, the MP for Central Grand Bahama said while stopping Minister Darville dead in his tracks in Parliament, Darville needs to provide specifics before he can ask any questions of the FNM,” Mr Cash said.

“We suspect that Minister Darville has no specifics to provide to the public and that his statements are typical PLP deflection tactics to shine a spotlight on the FNM and away from themselves.”

The party chairman said in governments worldwide, there are recipients of government programmes who abuse the system and such misconduct is not unique to the Bahamas.

“The FNM has no doubt that if Minister Darville looks under enough rocks he will find a few isolated instances where subscribers to the various government programmes misused the money they received,” Mr Cash said.

“We have breaking news for him; this will not be reasons to alert the media. It will not be the discovery of the ages!

“Minister Darville is new to politics, but he will soon learn that there is not a country on earth where dishonest people do not try to beat the system. Because that is expected, a responsible government must put steps in place to police its programmes, and when necessary, demonstrate the ability to hold people accountable before the courts.”

The FNM government has prosecuted “several persons” who cheated the unemployment benefit programme during the party’s last term in office, as “that is what responsible government do” and if the FNM had remained in office, prosecutions “would no doubt have followed” for those who abused other initiatives, Mr Cash said.