…No Commencement Date has been Written into Vesting Act

Dean Barrow

The Prime Minister has come under fire for proceeding with the vesting act while the employees at the FCIB are still trying to negotiate an exit package. But he says that the vesting act has absolutely nothing to do with the future of the employees. And to buy more time for the employees, Barrow says that no commencement date has been written into the Act, which means that it will only become law when he says so.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“It is facilitating what the Member for Mesop, the Minister of Housing, truly described as a private transaction—one company, one bank, buying the assets of another bank. It is a transaction that, as he said, we can’t stop. If we don’t pass the Vesting Bill that makes no difference because the purpose of the Vesting Bill is to make sure that the laborious process of registering the transfer of each individual mortgage and other securities from FCIB to Heritage is avoided. We are just facilitating so that they can do it all in one swoop, making sure that we don’t lose any of the tax that arises from the consequence of those transfers. So if we decided no, no, we noh wah pass the Vesting Bill…how does that help the workers? All it does is to have the two banks say alright well then we will transfer the individual mortgage securities one by one at the registry and go through the laborious process. So I…both in terms of himself and the leader of the Opposition….I can’t…I would like to think that it is ignorance and stupidity—ignorance in the sense of a lack of knowledge—but I know both of them enough to know that that can’t be so. This is straightforward and they perfectly understand what is happening, all that is happening and know that this is merely the facilitation on the part of government by law with respect of the transfer of these securities.”