Dear Editor,
I wonder how much longer the Private Sector Commission (PSC) can look at a dog and call it a cat. I am referring to the statement issued by this body (November 20) following extensive flooding in Georgetown and elsewhere on the coast after several hours of rainfall. In their statement the PSC called on the government “both central and local” (I would welcome to learn from this august body where in Guyana the latter, as defined by the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, exists?) to provide assistance and relief and listed five things that should be done.
The unreality then steps in. Members of the public are then urged to “allow the spirit of goodwill and friendship to prevail at this time so that communities can work together to overcome this problem (flooding).” The coup de grace is then delivered in the final paragraph where it identifies the cause of the flooding to be as a result of both a natural phenomenon and a governance problem. The solution to the latter it says, lies in having a “national inquiry” to identify lapses in the system so that processes can be improved in the future! Yea, next pigs will fly.
Let me save the PSC and anyone who may be tempted to participate in any such a charade, their time, trouble and money. The process to begin remedying the collapsed drainage system and infrastructure in general, in the capital city and elsewhere can only commence when the PPP/C administration allows for the eighty-one local government bodies (local democratic organs LDOs), ie, the ten regional democratic councils, six municipalities and sixty-five neighbourhood councils to function in accordance with existing constitutional provisions and enabling legislation, namely Cap 28:01; 28:02; 28:03 and 28:09.
It will require as well (i) operationalization of the Local Government Commission (LGC), a body that was identified in a constitutional provision of 2001 (resulting from the Herdmanston Accord of January 1998) eventually leading to the miniaturization of the Local Government Ministry as the work of the eighty-one autonomous LDOs will be regulated by the LGC); (ii) the holding of local government elections (overdue since 1997 and mandated by the National Assembly to have been held by August 1, 2014); and (iii) fiscal transfers in accordance with the Fiscal Transfers Act 2013, where it says that “central government has a responsibility to provide financial resources to local authorities … to assist them to discharge their functions and responsibilities” (Section 6 (2)).
Unwillingness on the part of the PSC to call for anything less than the foregoing will continue to make this body part of the problem and not part of the solution. It will as well cause many persons, including myself, to ask if they are genuinely interested in rehabilitating the woeful state of communities countrywide and meaningfully addressing the chronic problems of flooding, or to perpetuate PPP rule?
The PPP/C administration has degutted and destroyed the system of local government, which is now at a point of near-total collapse.
The PSC is fooling no one, except perhaps itself.
Yours faithfully,
Ronald Bulkan, MP
A Partnership for National Unity
