The Department of Tourism’s $27.3 million budget allocation came in for heavy criticism yesterday due to the absence of funding for the new Tourism Board.Former Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert charged the new Minister failed to explain why funds were allocated to the department when legislation was passed authorising the board to head up promotions and marketing.“This honourable House gave the right to spend money to the board, not the department. If anything, the department should be coming here and offering a grant to the board,” said Mr Furbert.He cited the Tourism Board Act 2012 verbatim and said the law clearly states that the funds “shall be allocated to the board from the legislature”.“Nowhere in the Government’s budget does it talk about giving money to the board. I’ll take a five-minute break so you can seek legal advice but the Tourism Act says the money is to be spent by the board, not the department.“Unless the Minister has a memorandum of understanding which he can lay before this House that tells me how the board and the department works - which I doubt because I didn’t sign it before I left,” he said.“We approved the act last year, you can’t break the law, the law states that the Government at the end of the day should allocate money to the board, and the Minister hasn’t told us in his briefing how the money is getting to the board.“Where is it? That’s why David Dodwell is missing, he doesn’t know what to say.”Mr Dodwell, the appointed chairman, was not present during the debate, but his deputy Michael Winfield was. He declined to comment on the proceedings to The Royal Gazette.The Opposition MP then called on “someone to advise the Minister” and noted that the new MP “only had three months’ experience on the job”. At that point Mr Crockwell rose to his feet to call for a point of order.“He has called on me to clarify, maybe the honourable member has a short memory but on December 17 there was a major event called an election,” said Mr Crockwell.Mr Furbert interjected and said: “We all know what happened on December 17, what we want to know is where is the board’s funding. The election does not allow any new Government to break any laws unless they change them.”Mr Crockwell replied: “There’s no breaking of law, if the honourable member would read the act he would see that is says ‘may’. There is nothing in the act that is mandatory for this legislature to provide a grant to the board; it’s discretionary.”He also noted that the board collects a $2.5 million fee “which is approximately $3 million to operate”.“So there’s no requirement of this legislature to provide any grant to the board, this Government campaigned on the establishment of a Tourism Authority,” he said.Mr Furbert interjected again and asked the Minister to say “yes or no” on whether the board is responsible for marketing and promotion.“At this time the board does not have any funding, other than that percentage which we put in place as a tourism fee and they cannot run proper promotion and marketing with that fee,” he said.He questioned what’s going to happen with tourism promotions moving forward considering the House of Parliament will soon rise for the summer.Later, before the time allotted for the debate had expired, Mr Crockwell reiterated that the board “is funded by a tourism guest fee set at 2.5 percent of the rack rate fee hotels charge guests”.“There was no mandate for us to provide the funding at this stage to the board,” Mr Crockwell said.He also reiterated that the Government is moving forward with plans to create a Tourism Authority.“We are still within the original six months,” he said. “We are working very hard to achieve that deadline.”