Communities minister has installed IMCs without due regard to the legislation

Dear Editor,

1) The appointment of public servants to be part of depleted and mismanaged NDCs and municipalities; the dissolution of some councils and their replacement by appointed IMCs are not a creation of the PPP or the PPP/C but are captured in the relevant legislative provisions on local government.

No doubt the legal luminaries of the day who worked to prepare these important pieces of legislation envisaged that there could be occasions when for one reason or another, the government of the day would find itself unable to hold local elections within the constituted timeframe and would have to make an interim arrangement. What the PPP/C government did was merely follow what is set out in the legislation.

The legislation sets out under what conditions we can use public servants, and again, under what conditions we can install Interim Management Com-mittees. The PPP/C and its Minister of Local Govern-ment and Regional Deve-lopment followed strictly what is in the legislation and sought to make the process as transparent and inclusionary as possible. In other words, the actions we took were not ad hoc or premised on a desire or plan to insert the PPP in these councils or to interfere or monopolise /control the management of the councils, but to enhance transparency and accountability and to improve efficiency in the management of the councils in the interest of people’s development; moreso since people’s resources in the form of rates and taxes and other fees, coupled with government financial support by way of subvention/ grants were involved.

2) The implications of not having local government elections over the past two decades due in no small measure to the political machinations of the then political opposition as they sought to stymie and to prolong the local government reform process, are well known to all decent, honest Guyanese.

It must be noted that the neither the PPP nor the PPP/C placed any encumbrance in the way of the PNC/PNCR/PNCR-1G/APNU/AFC to prevent them from working with us to accelerate the process. That is why the PPP/C government, in keeping within the legislative provisions, was compelled in some instances to invite public servants to be part of depleted councils, and in other instances of mismanaged councils, to install Interim Management Com-mittees to replace these.

In the latter instance, the action taken arose out of the recommendation of a commission of enquiry appointed by the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development to investigate a petition of residents dissatisfied with the way their NDC or municipality was being managed. The resultant enquiry allowed the petitioners and other concerned residents to attend and air their views and to offer their comments and recommendations to address the anomalies that needed to be corrected so that the council could move forward. It is obvious that any concerned Guyanese could have attended such an enquiry. Indeed, the date/time/ venue of the enquiry and the name of the commissioner were placed in at least two national newspapers and on the concerned NDC/municipal offices. It ought to be apparent that the enquiry provided opportunity for councilors and residents including those with political interests, to be heard.

At the end of the enquiry, the commissioner prepared a report that captured, inter alia, the views, comments, concerns and other representations, including the recommendations of the commissioner and others present.

3) Let me emphasize that the Interim Manage-ment Committees are not and were not set up by the PPP/C in any willy-nilly fashion without due regard for what is set out in the laws, as has been the case recently under the Minister of the Communities. IMCs have been installed by this Minister at the Anna Regina, Rose Hall and Corriverton municipalities without due regard to the legislation and the procedural requirements set out in that legislation and the accompanying regulations, and without even the courtesy of notifying or involving the Regional Chairman of the administrative regions concerned. So much for the change that the APNU+AFC have been shouting about. One wonders what will happen next. Furthermore, it could not be by accident that the 3 municipalities targeted are in towns that have significant PPP support as reflected in the recently held 2015 general and regional elections.

Why not target the city council and the town councils (notably the Linden Town Council) that have been the most poorly managed in our country.

Surely the cries of the frustrated residents of those latter municipalities with respect to the poor quality of core services offered to residents and the obvious lack of will on the part of the councils that mismanage available financial, human and material resources must be falling on deaf ears. Surely there is a case for “forensic audits” that have become so popular (at least in words) to be done with respect to the operations of these councils.

Talk about trampling on the rights of people to vote for leadership of their choice! Let me remind all that it was the People’s Progressive Party that restored this voting right and others to the people of Guyana. We have not, nor are we about to change this position.

Refer to Section 35 of the Local Government Act, Chapter 28:02 which addresses the issue of the “appointment of a public officer to be a member of a Local authority.” Refer also to Section 30 of the same act which section speaks to the issue of the dissolution of a local authority.

Note also that Section 305 (1)b of Chapter 28:01 the Municipal and District Councils Act sets out the course of action the Minister could take if an enquiry has determined that the municipality “has failed to maintain a reasonable standard of efficiency and progress in the discharge of its functions.”

Yours faithfully,
Norman Whittaker