Dear Editor,
The report on the substantive malfunctioning of the administrative and financial management systems of the Mayor and City Council – the oldest municipality in the nation – is a further reflection of the ineffectual management of the overall local government system. It follows on the collapse of other municipalities like the Linden and Corriverton Town Councils, as well as upon the known deficiencies of several Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs).
The question is whether a pattern can be discerned to explain these signal failures of organisations managed by persons of various lengths of experience, including at the national level of government.
It is worth noting that over the past decade there have been significant contributions made across the country by a number of experts in local government, most of them non-resident. Perhaps the most substantial and wide-ranging inputs have come from the Municipal Governance and Management Programme. There has also been a rather comprehensive Urban Development Programme preceded by the Urban Rehabilitation Programme, and other consultancies, some of which focused on Solid Waste Management. The current exercise is called the Community Enhancement Programme – each apparently disconnected from the other.
The sad story is that there is minimal progress to show for all these well designed and implemented interventions.
In the particular case of the M&CC which, like other municipalities, fall under the Municipal and District Councils Act 28:01, there is no provision for the Mayor and City Councillors to dictate, direct or control the Town Clerk. The opposite is in fact the case. The Town Clerk may advise the council. As also the council cannot sanction deviant behaviour by the Town Clerk or other senior officers of the council, except with the explicit approval of the minister, any such initiative would be frustrated without the latter’s support. It cannot be successfully denied that one or more reports of the council’s unhappiness with the perceived mal-performance of senior officials of the M&CC, including the Town Clerk, were officially brought to the attention of the Ministry of Local Government. So what is the inference to be drawn regarding the future prospects of these suspended officials vis-à-vis the interests of the Mayor and City Council and the citizens of Georgetown?
Interested stakeholders may wish to note that Cap 28:01 provides for the establishment of a Local Government Commission to review such administrative issues. However, as a result of the non-appointment of the commission, the Minister of Local Government has ever since been the final authority in matters that require decisions based on objective review of the available evidence. As experience has shown, however, the current management style is informed by narrow political considerations. In the instant case the incumbent Mayor’s position would hardly be favoured, even at the risk of the citizens of Georgetown being left vulnerable to the machinations of defective officials, as reported by the Auditor General.
But there may be other lessons to be extrapolated from this set of circumstances. The Government of Guyana has since embarked on a programme of community enhancement, a component of which relates to the upgrading of the mini-communities of Parika, Bartica, Charity and Supenaam. It seems an opportune time to conduct a close review of the skill and competency capacities of their respective small populations to undertake the tasks which historically better prepared municipalities like the M&CC have failed, partly because of myopic oversight at the ministerial level.
Perhaps in the interest of explicit transparency it may not be a bad thing if the current ‘advisor’ to the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development recuses himself from any further activity related to this particular debacle.
Since writing the above I have noted the Mayor’s complaint that the Town Clerk, whilst on leave, has written direct to the Auditor General responding to the latter’s report. This is exactly typical of the insubordination of which the city council is reported to have previously complained. It is highly improper organisational conduct which would certainly not be condoned had it occurred in any government or, indeed, private sector institution. The Auditor General should return the correspondence unacknowledged, that is, if that office recognises that such behaviour breaches any code of ethics.
In the meantime it seems ludicrous that the Ministry of Local Government should be hesitant in making a decision regarding such explicit improprieties, when it has replaced at least two municipalities, and dismissed the respective mayors for less miscreant behaviour.
Does it not at all revert to the (apparent) compassion shown by the former Minister of Local Government to these errant officials in respect of previous complaints?
Yours faithfully,
Eliah Bijay
