Dear Editor,
One wonders whether even the relevant decision-makers are aware that the current Local Government Commissioners are the first appointees since the Municipal & District Councils Act of 1969 was passed, and provided for such appointments.
Belated as its appointment may be, it is most welcome action, which however, does not satisfactorily address the substantial requirements for the effective functioning of the Commission – this being, like the Public Service Commission, a substantive Human Resources Management function – a capability that, with respect, is barely identifiable amongst a team of former political activists. Even the former Town Clerk cannot lay claim to expert knowledge in that regard.
But this does by no means minimise the team’s relevant experience (for what it is worth) in local government administration.
It is in this regard that one appeals anxiously for their attention to be paid to the tsunamic organisational deconstruction better known as the Mayor and City Council, whose performance hardly reflects that it is the oldest Municipality in the history of the country, while setting the worst possible model to all those that have since existed.
It is therefore with a sense of urgency that one appeals to the Commissioners to revisit an important exercise with which all would have been familiar – the very explicit Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Mayor & City Councillors of Georgetown concluded by a team chaired by Keith Burrowes. Strangely enough the administration, of which current Commissioners were members, never followed through with an iota of implementation.
Those of us who were involved at the time now wish to commend a revisitation of this Report on an institution that is a substantive embarrassment to the image of governance in this country.
The level of under-performance and ineffectiveness has gone beyond the limits of the endurance of our citizenry.
Please revive the Burrowes Report. Councillor Alfred Mentore has my copy to be made available.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
