by Bennette Roach
Dawson Martin
On Wednesday this week at his monthly press conference, held four weeks after his previous, H E Governor Adrian Davis supported by Martin Dawson told the media, that the MDC Task Force had completed its investigative review work of the Montserrat Development Corporation (MDC), and had issued an interim report to himself the Governor and the Premier Donaldson Romeo.
Martin Dawson is the local UK Govt. Department For International Development (DFID) and is a member of the Task Force which was engaged to, as Dawson explained to review the operations and functions of the Montserrat Development Corporation (MDC), i.e. “the current operations, particularly the governance arrangements of the MDC, and make recommendations in order to ensure that the corporation is fit for purpose and has the capacity and capability to deliver Government’s policy objectives for Investment & Trade and Tourism”; and as explained further by Dawson, “to review process both internal mechanism but also to consider the Government strategy for investment and trade and tourism…” (see last week’s “MDC Task force to report soon.”
The Governor and Dawson had also advised that the report would be ready early March. The Governor then reported: “..it’s an interim report and the handling of the full report is also something that will have to be decided by the Government of Montserrat as the sole shareholder of MDC. There is absolutely no question that the interim report should have been published,” noting again and again, “It is an interim report, and it is a work in progress… the interim report was simply a work in progress for Government of Montserrat, DFID, Foreign Office, just to have a look at emerging conclusions.”
”Later he qualified that referring to the task force: “they produced an interim report about ten days ago and the full report is due at the end of this week,” repeating, ”The full report should be available by the end of this week, it will then be up to the Government of Montserrat how that is handled and how if at all it’s distributed.”
“How do you feel about that Your Excellency, should it be distributed?” he was asked.
He responded, “I think I will reserve judgment until I’ve actually read it,” to accusations of lack of transparency of Government from the media.
After Dawson when asked for his position on the Report, reminded that he had promised to keep the media updated, he concurred with the Governor who also said: “The full report should be available by the end of this week, it will then be up to the Government of Montserrat how that is handled and how if at all it’s distributed.”
When pressed as to whether there needs to be any discretion on the issue, the Governor continued: “it may be that there are certain sensitive issues in it that are inappropriate to reveal publicly and there may be two versions of the report, but until we actually see it we don’t really know.”
So, where is the interim report? They felt it was up to the Premier, who still has not met the press (formally) since taking up office, to make the report available.
Nothing was forthcoming up to press time Friday, but the Premier meantime told TMR when asked about it, that the report was far from being in a state to be presented.
