Two revealing meetings were held over the last two weeks in relation to local government at which the subject minister Mr Kellawan Lall presided. At the first, a two-day seminar for officials responsible for carrying out local government projects, Mr Lall addressed frontally the longstanding concern about the perception of widespread corruption in local government. “A lot of you know that the stigma of corruption at the local level has been very rife in various areas”, he admonished, while adding that “sometimes these impressions are not true”. He also emphasized the need for regional officials to be well acquainted with the tender board proceedings so that they would be properly equipped to judge when they were being made fools of by contractors. He also raised the spectre of blacklisting contractors who do shoddy work and adverted to the problems that arise through poor design of work which then necessitates multiple variations in the contract. Monitoring and evaluation were other weaknesses identified by Mr Lall and he argued, as others in his position have argued, that information such as the bills of quantities should be made readily available to the public so that citizens could do their own policing. Another sore point for the minister was the absence of security for contracts.
At a second forum at the close of the week for regional chairmen, vice chairmen and regional executive officers, Mr Lall continued in the same vein and pointed out that local government will benefit from a large sum over the next five years via funds allocated to his ministry.
There will be no disagreement with Mr Lall’s statement about the need to address the perception of corruption. The thirteen years since the last local government elections have been lost years as they relate to accountability for sums spent on local government projects and value for money.
The issue that underpins all of this is that since 1994 billions of dollars have been poured into projects where regional and local government councils have some oversight responsibility. As quoted by the Government Information Agency, Mr Lall pointed to this role. “Regional governments actually substitute for central government
