By Halshane Burke
The government has been dogged by weaknesses in legislative policy development.
That's the word from Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte, who says the weaknesses have affected the quality of the related Cabinet submissions as well as the drafting instructions to the Chief Parliamentary Counsel.
It was recently revealed that only seven or 25 per cent of the 28 proposed pieces of legislation were enacted during the current legislative year.
Mrs Malahoo Forte says the ministry is taking steps to address the issues that have hampered the process of drafting legislation.
To this end, she said her ministry is seeking to introduce a training programme to "build the capacity of officers in this area".
"It is projected that this training course will be implemented in the first quarter of the 23/24 financial year," she added.
The minister was making a presentation in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Speed up process
The opposition, in the meantime, has called for more to be done to speed up the process of preparing legislation.
Opposition Leader Mark Golding said the country has been struggling with the timely response to matters that require legislative intervention.
He said it takes too long to fix or update laws that are outdated or are no longer fit for purpose.
The Opposition Leader wants more drafters to be introduced to help end the practice of prospective legislation languishing for years.
He argued that Jamaica is "severely underserved" in terms of the number of professional drafters in the public service per capita of the population.
Apart from Acts of Parliament, he said there are subsidiary legislation, regulations, orders, and tax-related instruments that need to be prepared and gazetted properly.
"If they're not properly done, you end up collecting tax which is not properly authorised. You have to bring legislation here to validate that error which waste parliamentary time, waste drafters’ time, waste everybody's time. So those resources are very important and we need to put some more emphasis on that area," he urged.
