| The Senate will meet tomorrow afternoon at 2:00, but it's not going to be business as usual. Yes, new pieces of legislation presented at the House last Friday like the new Immigration Laws are going to be tabled, but the main event will be the notice of motion from PUP Senator Lisa Shoman. With a motion filed a week ago, she is asking the Senate to pass a resolution to appoint a Special Select Committee to investigate the issuance of Nationality certificates, Passports and Visas at the Department of Immigration. The motion proposes that the Committee be comprised of five members, one government, one opposition and three from the social partners. One social partner that's definitely in favour of the motion is labour. Today, Sharon Fraser of the Association of Public Service Senior Managers told us why:..
Sharon Fraser, Vice President - Association of Public Service Senior Managers
"The NTUCB is in fact supporting that position that in fact there is the Senate Select Committee."
Jules Vasquez
"As we saw with a very painstaking investigation when Mr. Hulse was a Senator, it took months upon months, hours upon hours and it amounts to zero. That's just how it is because many of the offences aren't actionable."
Sharon Fraser, Vice President - Association of Public Service Senior Managers
"Yes but at least the public will get to see the wrong doings that would have happen within Immigration because at least that is a public hearing for the most part."
Jules Vasquez
"It is the expectation that the government side at tomorrow's Senate meeting will vote against that motion and that will be the end of that. How far are you all prepared to go (The unions) in their insistence for such a special select committee to be formed."
Sharon Fraser
"For us to take a position that is a matter that the affiliates within NTUCB would have to decide. At this point we've only discuss whether or not we would lend our support to the forming of that committee. That is where we are at this point in time. We will wait and see, we don't want to anticipate what will happen in the senate."
And while the opposition and the social partners are expected to vote in favour of the motion - that's only six votes, and the government side also has six votes. In such cases, the President - a former UDP area representative - uses his casting vote to break the deadlock.
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