Dear Editor,
With reference to your several news items on the Cabinet and Minister Bulkan suspending the parking meter bylaws and the clamping of vehicles (SN, March 20, 21, 22), it is my view the central government is usurping the power of the local government Georgetown City Council and in so doing has set a precedent to emaciate all locally elected bodies.
Local bodies should have autonomous powers to exercise control over all local issues including transportation and parking. While I am against the parking meter project, I am equally against the central government intervening in the affairs of local government. Let the local organs exercise unrestrained powers over local matters with their own policies and regulations. But the local bodies must follow procedures and manage the affairs of their organs with integrity and transparency. People are unhappy with the parking meter project. It should have been suspended.
The city council should have suspended the parking regulations without central government’s intervention since legal luminaries have opined that the implementation of parking meters is illegal. The city council entered into an agreement with the foreign company for parking meters without following the required procedure. The city council failed to put the parking meter project to tender as required by law. The rights of motorists were violated. The entire city and those who patronize the city were disrespected. Having failed to adhere to legal procedures, and having been given countless opportunities to suspend the implementation of parking meters as well as to start over the entire process in line with the law, the central government must have felt it had no other option but to take the extraordinary step of ordering the suspension of the controversial parking meter programme. The city council could have avoided this problem of the central government defanging it of an essential power and setting a precedent of curtailing the powers of local governments.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
