Prime Minister Bruce Golding (foreground) leads members of his governing Jamaica Labour Party along Duke Street, in Kingston, into Gordon House ahead of last week's opening of Parliament for the 2008/2009 term. - File

The Golding administration on Tuesday night confirmed that the Lands portfolio and aspects of the Environment profile had been transferred to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

The motivation behind the move was "to streamline the assignment of ministerial responsibilities", a government release said.

The Lands portfolio has been transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Planning and Development Division of the OPM. Meanwhile, the National Environment and Planning Agency, the government authority responsible for approving development projects, has been transferred from the Ministry of Health and Environment and now comes under the oversight of the OPM.

Opposition concerns

The Opposition had raised concerns on Sunday, during its National Executive Council meeting, that the Office of the Prime Minister was becoming a bureaucratic behemoth. People's National Party (PNP) officials, including Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller, said the prime minister's office was arrogating unto itself a mass of ministerial responsibilities which would inevitably create a bottleneck in governance.

PNP General Secretary Peter Bunting had said there was "a tremendous concentration with the Office of the PM, far beyond what we have ever seen".

Bunting argued that the transfer could have been spurred by the PM's lack of confidence in his ministers managing some portfolios.

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller had also questioned why the Government had not disclosed the changes to the nation.

"It is the media which brought this issue to light," she said. "If this is so, something is wrong. The PM has the right to name ministries and assign portfolio responsibility, but he does not have the right to make the transfer without informing the Jamaican people."

Conflict of interest

A possible conflict of interest, emanating from a schizophrenic convergence of land development ambitions and environmental concerns, triggered the reclassification, the release said.

"This is consistent with our stated manifesto and commitment made by the Government prior to last year's election, in that the environment regulatory functions are compromised by being in the development approval process and the Government is committed to rectifying this," the release quoted Prime Minister Golding as saying.

The Government has also created a new environmental protection agency, which will now have independent oversight responsibilities for environmental regulatory functions, which were merged into the NEPA by the previous administration. The new agency will be under the portfolio of the Ministry of Health and Environment.

Audley Shaw, minister of finance and the public service, had earlier disclosed, during Tuesday's sitting of the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament, that the prime minister had shifted the portfolios.

Fourteen government departments are now assigned to the Office of the Prime Minister.