New Government Members of Parliament (MPs), who form the backbench, are currently undergoing training in parliamentary governance.

This was disclosed by Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, who informed that he arranged the online training sessions with the University of McGill, based in Canada.

“To be clear, this is not from government resources. This is our internal initiative to ensure that our new MPs, who form the backbench, understand Parliamentary governance [and] Parliamentary procedures,”

he said.

The Prime Minister noted that this training is crucial given the important role the backbench has to play in leading the charge for oversight, particularly on the achievement of policy goals and targets in public bodies and agencies.

He said that new MPs may not have all the skills at the outset to effectively carry out the functions of their job.

He stressed that MPs need to be able to “read a financial statement, you should be able to go through a policy and figure out whether the policy is equitable, whether the policy was well researched. You should be able to prepare a presentation [and] you have to be able to write projects and make representation for those projects”.