Dear Editor,
After being governed by various local government bodies for the past fourteen years, it is obvious that citizens have got fed up with the modus operandi of most, if not all of these municipalities and NDCs. It is interesting to note that during this prolonged period interim management committees have been established to run the affairs of some of these bodies, and there have been resignations of officers and no confidence votes, which have allowed for the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of some of them. One can conclude that the people who are part of these bodies have become frustrated and hence they are not motivated to perform their duties as they were tasked to do some fourteen years ago.
It is rather surprising that the present PPP/C regime which talks about democracy and abiding by the Constitution of Guyana has embraced the notion of no local government elections for the past fourteen years. It is this same regime while in opposition that criticised the PNC government for not holding these elections, and now they are guilty of the same thing. While I know they will want to say that aspects of local government reform were necessary, I am aware that these reforms have been completed, hence elections should be held as soon as possible. However, from what I have been seeing and hearing there seems to be no urgency in having these elections held.
If one should take the words of Dr Roger Luncheon seriously when he stated at a recent press conference that local government elections were still possible this year, then I look forward with some amount of anxiety to see these words being put into action.
Yours faithfully,
Grayson Samuels
Editor’s note
Co-Chairman of the Task Force on local government reform, Mr Vincent Alexander, told this newspaper recently that there were four pieces of legislation in relation to local government which were to be presented to Parliament. Of these, one draft bill was more-or-less complete and a second was almost complete. The task force, he said, was working with the Attorney General’s office, and the idea was to present the four bills to the National Assembly in one package. He expressed the hope that the work would be completed by the third quarter of this year.
