Acceptance of an alternative committee to run Kwakwani could see the springing up of other such bodies elsewhere, Junior Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker warned on Thursday.
Whittaker emphasised that the ministry will not recognise the Kwakwani committee and added that the “strong legal and administrative measures” that he has said will be taken against the Region Ten Regional Democratic Council (RDC) are to be determined with the guidance of Attorney General Anil Nandlall.
Kwakwani residents on Wednesday night cast ballots to elect a committee to run the community—a move that has been condemned by the ministry. Following the elections, 15 persons were elected. They are: Angela Schultz, Ann Gordon, Carl Liverpool, Cort Simeon, Charles Thom, Danetta Jeffrey, Irel Roberts, Judith Welcome, Jocelyn Morian, Kelvin Daly, Karen Julien, Neil Patterson, Rosamond Samuels, Shackelia Sampson and Rayon Jackson. The elected committee is to hold a meeting tomorrow afternoon to elect a chairperson and a vice-chairperson and formulate a work plan.
The ministry had earlier this year dissolved the Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) and installed an Interim Management Committee (IMC) in the community. The IMC was rejected by a number of residents and some members said they were unaware of their appointment to the IMC until they saw it in the newspapers.
“We recognise the IMC because that body was installed… in keeping with the legislative procedures. We did not break any laws and therefore that is the only constitutional body that we will recognise as handling the affairs of the people of Kwakwani,” Whittaker said at a press conference at the ministry’s Kingston building.
He said they will work with individual members. “But as a body of people responsible for managing a community, for governance certainly we could not, at the level of the ministry, work with such a body,” he stressed in relation to the committee.
According to Whittaker, Region Ten Chairman Sharma Solomon’s stated positions on the situation indicate that the RDC would only deal with the body elected on Wednesday evening and not the IMC. “To that extent… it’s an ultra vires act, it’s illegal, it’s outside of the constitution and the chairman as an official holder of public office…whatever he says and does in relation to matters of that nature could reasonably be expected to be assumed to be an act on the part of Mr Solomon as chairman and by extension the RDC and you couldn’t do that because the next [thing] that’s gonna happen we might have a parallel IMC for the Linden municipality and then you might have a set of CDCs springing up all over the place. You couldn’t do that,” he declared.
He said the ministry will deal with the properly “elected” body, the Kwakwani IMC, whose subvention programme has been approved and for which the funds to do work will be made available.
Abuse of authority
Whittaker, after meeting with Region Ten officials on the issue, had written to Solomon and warned that under the Local Democratic Organs Act and the Local Government Act, neither Solomon nor the RDC had any authority to facilitate the polls. Whittaker further pointed to the July 2012 Ministerial Order by Local Government Minister Ganga Persaud, which revoked the delegated authority that was granted by the previous government to RDCs in 1983 by the then Minister of National Mobilisation, which had allowed for a relevant RDC to oversee the NDCs operating within its geographic area.
He said the revocation had brought all NDCs under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and its duly authorised personnel.
Asked by Stabroek News about the rationale for the revocation of the authority, Whittaker explained that decentralisation of the authority to RDCs was intended to provide more opportunity for leaders at the local level to be part of decision making on matters that contribute to people’s development. “Our experience has been that a lot of this has been abused,” he said. “A lot of it has not been applied in the way that it ought to be applied.”
The minister cited the employment of staff as an example and said that over time it has been determined that the processes have not been properly followed. “The result has been that the quality and the type of staff that have been recruited to service some of these local government bodies have become very much wanting,” he said, adding that these are some of the reasons why, over time, the ministry has been forced to withdraw some of the delegated responsibilities that would have been given to local government bodies.
In relation to whether it was against the spirit of putting more power in the hands of communities rather than in central government, which the parties have been working towards as part of local government reform, Whittaker said that the devolution of authority or responsibility is premised on whether the persons or the bodies to whom such responsibilities or authorities have been devolved are prepared to shoulder those responsibilities and authorities. He said that at the level of the ministry, they were working through on the job training and reaching out to prepare people to be a little more responsible and be a little more efficient in the way they are able to handle that authority, and responsibility placed on them but “that has not been happening.”
He said that some NDCs and municipalities have been abusing their power for political mileage or their own political agenda and the ministry could not allow this at the expense of the people’s needs. He said Kwakwani and Bartica are examples. He said that in Bartica—where an IMC was recently installed by the ministry—people were given permission to squat on government reserves. There are many other examples but it is more prominent with respect to employment of people and delivery of services where officials of the local bodies are selective in terms of which communities within a neighbourhood get services, Whittaker said.
Old law
Meantime, the AFC has come out in support of the Kwakwani residents’ decision. The party’s Chairman Nigel Hughes at a media briefing on Thursday said that the law under which the local government minister is purporting to Act to impose IMCs is the “old law”. Hughes said that subsequent to that, the 1980 Constitution gives fundamental rights to the citizens to have their representatives at all levels of government to manage the affairs of the state as well as local government and which also allows the participation of the citizenry in their own governance. As a principle, he said, the party believes it trumps the provisions of the Local Government Act, Chapter 28:02. “As a principle we certainly believe that between 1994 and now…it is unacceptable for the citizenry in any location to have to be continued to be frustrated and have IMCs which they had absolutely no say in identifying, imposed upon them. It is the worst form of imposition. It is almost as if you have an external colonial government directing the local government,” he said.
AFC General Secretary David Patterson also suggested that the government is afraid of empowering the citizenry. “The mischief in it is empowerment. Should Kwakwani stand up and succeed, Bartica, Ithaca, Annandale, they will all say ‘fair enough, we would like this’. The only resolution government has, is to hold local government elections so that’s why they will come down with a hammer to kill a fly in Kwakwani,” he said.
