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Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"It is to kind of formalize and to say to ministries this is what you have to work with. I was one of those ministers who asked the Prime Minister, well, how it is that we're to operate? Because I think it is no secret that the income, the revenue for the government is cut. In fact, you've heard it is more than half of the income that we're not getting in these times. And how is that we're to operate in our ministry if we don't know exactly how much monies are going to come? So, what the memorandum, sent from the Financial Secretary, says is that these monies used to be disbursed in 1/12th payments which signify the number of months in the year. Every month, you get 1/12th of the sum allocated for that particular expenditure line in our budget. Well now, it's going to be cut to 1/20th. So now, you'll only get 1/20th every month of what the total sum is. That gives us an understanding of what monies exist. Tomorrow morning, we're going to meet with the department heads and key players in our ministry to look at things, and to say, okay, this is what is afforded to us, can we - and we're asked for permission to do this. Can we re-juggle things to cover those priority areas that we in the ministry believe. We have school feeding, school transportation. We have textbooks. We have subsidies. We have CXC payments, feeding programs. All of these things are budgeted for in our budget. But, we're only going to get so much money. So, we asked for that opportunity, and I supposed that other ministries will do the same. They will then sit down and prioritize where they believe that kind of spending ought to happen. It's an unfortunate situation. Everybody can't get what they want. There are going to be some cuts, probably, in some services that we really believe are important, but there are other things that are important. Everybody will not be happy. I am pretty certain."