Chairman of the Region 10 Regional Democratic Council, Sharma Solomon said that a meeting on Friday between the Region and Government saw the two sides further narrowing down the list of persons to chair two of the three committees spawned by the August 21, 2012 agreement – the Technical Review Committee and the Economic Review Committee.
Speaking to this newspaper on Friday night, Solomon said that while the talks on that day centred on the persons for those committees, the agenda had not moved on to discussing the burning issue of Linden television.
However, he said that there is another meeting fixed between the two sides for Wednesday. Friday’s meeting was the first engagement since the community meeting in Linden on Saturday January 12 during which the Region shared with the citizens its demands of Government with regard to fulfilling the agreement. At that meeting too the citizens of Linden and Region 10 in general voiced their desire for the agreement to be fulfilled to the fullest measure.
Solomon had accused the Government of frustrating the implementation of the many facets of the agreement by failing to put in place what it agreed to on August 21. He said too that the Government’s stance on the issue of the television licence and frequency allocation is a departure from what had been agreed to.
The August 21 pact ended a month-long shutdown of Linden in protest over higher electricity tariffs.
The Technical Review Committee is tasked with reviewing the existing provision and consumption of electricity in Linden, including its history, the costs, the tariff structure, and the subsidies; considering arrangements to provide electricity to the Linden community and the tariffs to sustain such arrangements within a sustainable time frame; examining Region 10′s economic circumstances inclusive of the affordability of increased costs; looking at the advantages and disadvantages of the integration of the supply of electricity in the Linden area into the national grid; and making recommendations on cost-saving measures and options for alternative energy, including the facilitation of conservation education.
The Chairman of this committee Narvon Persaud resigned from the position and a replacement is yet to be named. The Economic Committee is meant to examine all studies, all sectors and their resources in use, new resources and human resources and develop a sustainable development plan for Linden and Region 10.
It is also supposed to review all initiatives, including LEAP and LEN, with the aim of gleaning lessons to be learnt from these initiatives and making recommendations for new initiatives.
According to the agreement, it will look at Linden and Region 10′s facilities and capacity for food self-sufficiency and to the extent feasible develop a plan for self-sufficiency as part of the Regional Development Plan. The Chairperson of this committee is still to be appointed.
