Alliance for Change (AFC) Vice Chairman Moses Nagamootoo has asserted that the government’s failure to solve the problems of City Hall is because it has for so long not held Local Government elections.

AFC Vice Chairman Moses Nagamootoo

According to Nagamootoo, part of the problem is that Government refuses to hold elections so that “the people of this country and of the City can be given an opportunity to help bring a solution to put the kind of leaders in City Hall who would be responsible and responsive and the AFC shares the view of all stakeholders who have said that it is unacceptable not to have Local Government elections after 17 years when they have become due.”
Nagamootoo disagreed with Government’s position of wanting to put an Interim Management Council (IMC) in place in an attempt to solve the current problems of the council. Among other things there are two Town Clerks (City Hall’s Royston King and Local Government Ministry’s Carol Sooba) and no Local Government Commission in place to decide who could be fired or hired.
To have an IMC in place according to the AFC Vice Chairman “is like injecting within the problem, a new problem which is this government.”
“We believe that the solution to Georgetown is not foisting a Carol Sooba as a show piece of the citizens and the Council but for the government to be able to do the right thing, clean the Augean Stable and hold Local Government elections,” said Nagamootoo.
The holding of Local Government elections according to the AFC Vice Chairman “will encourage the citizens of this country to step forward, it will encourage people of quality to step forward, they do not have to be politicians, they do not have to be members of a political party, they just have to be decent concerned citizens who must say enough is enough and we want a right to vote in a new council.”
He said further that “tinkering with it and putting one set of people in an IMC is not going to work anymore.”
Meanwhile A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) through its leader David Granger at a press briefing yesterday made their position clear over the problems with City Hall.
According to Granger, “We feel that the entire process involving the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development is badly flawed and that it constitutes an unusually intervention in the work of the City Hall with the intention of frustrating the elected councilors.”
He noted that APNU is fully in support of the elected councilors, “We are in support of the appointment of Royston King as the Town Clerk and we feel that the whole purpose of local democracy is to ensure that the persons who have been elected and who are still in office regardless of how long, are allowed to choose the officers who going to administer the City Council.”
According to Granger, “It is quite clear that the appointment of Ms. Sooba has caused a great deal of mismanagement in the City Council and she is unwanted by the elected officials and it is not for the government to continue to impose an unworkable situation on the City Council, its causing a problem and the way to solve the problem is to remove Ms. Sooba and that is my position and the position of APNU.”