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Well, today the Prime Minister brought the Christmas Assistance Program Reporting motion to the house and heartily defended it - while the opposition complained that it was left out:..

Hon. Francis Fonseca, Leader of the Opposition - PUP
"I wish for the record to reflect with absolute clarity that no member on this side of the House benefitted from this so-called Christmas Assistance program. In fact we were no beneficiaries of the Prime Minister's Christmas goodwill. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is important that the people of this country understand that unelected UDP standard bearers received the monies that we are talking about today. They receive those funds in each of our constituencies and in fact they were all over the place boasting about it on TV that they received these funds. We regard that as an absolute travesty. So we want the record to reflect with absolutely clarity that we were not participants in this program. We were not beneficiaries of this program and in fact it should be more appropriately called a UDP election Christmas assistance program because that is exactly what it was."

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"No member of the House benefited from this program. The people of this country benefited. Every bit of assistance that was given to anyone was channeled through a ministry of government with a clear and transparent record of the disbursements and with evidence of the receipt of the disbursements by the people of this country."

"Nobody on this side of the House, no UDP official got a penny in his hand, none. Contrast that with the 20 million dollars in Venezuelan money before the last election. Did you even bring that to the House by way of a reporting motion?"

The total cost of the programme was 1.24 million dollars.

A bill will be introduced at the next sitting of the house to confirm the special appropriation for the programme.