Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form Bill is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net and will be brought to Par­lia­ment for de­bate and pas­sage "very soon,"PNM Sen­a­tor Con­rad Enill said yes­ter­day.

Enill gave the lat­est on the bill in re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form Bill 2010 will clear the way for hold­ing of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls. This is due any­time be­tween Ju­ly and Oc­to­ber fol­low­ing the end of the term of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions in June. Polls have been post­poned four times, the lat­est be­ing last year when Gov­ern­ment called for more time to fi­nalise the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form pack­age. At the time the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry pro­ject­ed the re­form process, which forms the ba­sis of the up­com­ing bill, should be com­plet­ed by next month. Yes­ter­day, in the Sen­ate, Enill, who is al­so PNM chair­man, said Gov­ern­ment was as­sid­u­ous­ly pur­su­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form pro­gramme.

He added: "In keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions be­ing held lat­er this year, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bill 2010 is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­sid­ered by Cab­i­net and will be laid in Par­lia­ment for de­bate and pas­sage very soon." He said oth­er crit­i­cal el­e­ments of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment sys­tems, in­clud­ing re­vised bound­aries and the re­formed or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry and cor­po­ra­tions were be­ing fi­nalised for Gov­ern­ment's con­sid­er­a­tion. Al­so, he said, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry and an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team were in talks with trade unions on tran­si­tion­al is­sues con­cern­ing hu­man re­sources and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues. UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked if the up­com­ing bill would be tak­en to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment. That could ef­fec­tive­ly de­lay it, he said.

Enill said Mark knew he was not in a po­si­tion to an­swer that at this point in time. He added that if there were is­sues that re­quired the bill to "go back" this would be done, but he could not say at this point if it would in­deed go to a JSC. On an­oth­er ques­tion, Enill con­firmed re­struc­tur­ing of the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege was on the cards in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T. Enill said Gov­ern­ment had asked the lead­er­ship of the Cipri­ani Col­lege and UTT to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties and ad­vise on a "op­ti­mal so­lu­tion for a vi­able path­way" on that.