The fol­low­ing is based on a pre­sen­ta­tion made to the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paroRe­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion at its an­nu­al re­treat on No­vem­ber 5 by Lennox Sankers­ingh,at­tor­ney and for­mer chair­man of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Au­thor­i­ties

Part I

Per­haps the best place to be­gin is to as­sess the role of the coun­cil­lor in the en­tire de­vel­op­men­tal process. In do­ing this, we would have to con­sid­er the con­cept of de­vel­op­ment, what is it and how can it be de­fined.All of you would have seen re­cent­ly that T&T was de­clared a "de­vel­oped coun­try" by cer­tain in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. This was based en­tire­ly on the per capi­ta in­come of the so­ci­ety, which means the av­er­age in­come per per­son. We would all have re­alised that this is a mis­lead­ing ba­sis on which to judge the de­vel­op­ment of a so­ci­ety.

For many years now, so­cial sci­en­tists have em­pha­sised this. The sim­plest il­lus­tra­tion one can use to show the fal­la­cy of this ap­proach is by point­ing out that if Bill Gates and any­one of you were stand­ing alone in a room, and we know that Bill Gates' net worth is $40 bil­lion, then the av­er­age net worth of the peo­ple stand­ing in the room would be $20 bil­lion. You would ap­pre­ci­ate how mis­lead­ing this would be.

A con­cept of de­vel­op­ment

It is there­fore im­por­tant to build in your own minds a con­cept of de­vel­op­ment. There is no doubt that de­vel­op­ment must be based, first and fore­most, on the peo­ple. That is, you can have all the mon-ey you need, pave all the roads, build all the in­fra­struc­ture, but if the peo­ple are not the pri­ma­ry fo­cus, then the so­ci­ety is go­ing nowhere.

In this sense, the peo­ple must be ful­ly in­volved in the process in every pos­si­ble way. As such, there­fore, you must be­gin to see the process of de­vel­op­ment as the fullest pos­si­ble in­volve­ment of the peo­ple in de­ci­sions that af­fect their ba­sic needs as far as this is pos­si­ble with­in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive sys­tem. This is a use­ful con­cept to keep in your mind as you pon­der what are the pa­ra­me­ters of the de­vel­op­ment process.

The key word here is "par­tic­i­pa­tion" and this is where your role as coun­cil­lors is fun­da­men­tal in the en­tire ex­er­cise. As a coun­cil­lor, you are in di­rect con­tact with the peo­ple in your elec­toral dis­trict.You are the per­son on the ground and there­fore the in­volve­ment of your peo­ple in un­der­stand­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the de­ci­sions that af­fect their ba­sic needs fall square­ly on your shoul­ders. No one else with­in the in­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tems that gov­ern us would have such a vi­tal role. Based on this a coun­cil­lor must see him­self pri­mar­i­ly as an agent of de­vel­op­ment.

Present­ly, coun­cil­lors are be­ing pro­vid­ed by the State with an of­fice, a sec­re­tary, a tele­phone and equip­ment to op­er­ate the of­fice to­geth­er with a month­ly salary. This would cer­tain­ly go a long way in achiev­ing your ob­jec­tive as be­ing an agent of de­vel­op­ment.In ful­fill­ing your role as a coun­cil­lor and the lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of your peo­ple, there are cer­tain lev­els you can strive to at­tain.

Lev­el one coun­cil­lor

A coun­cil­lor can per­form ad­e­quate­ly if he car­ries out his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act, 1990, which out­lines the du­ties, roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the coun­cil. Most of these would be found in Sec­tion 232 of the Act and would deal with such ba­sic ser­vices as drains, roads, recre­ation grounds, ceme­ter­ies, truck-borne wa­ter and a host of oth­er ba­sic ser­vices.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, all of you would be striv­ing valiant­ly to de­liv­er these ser­vices to the res­i­dents of your elec­toral dis­trict. You must study your gov­ern­ing Act care­ful­ly. It is a very com­pre­hen­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion and you would re­alise that it was in­tend­ed to pro­vide the coun­cil with very wide pow­ers so as to take con­trol of the area it serves or what is re­ferred to un­der the Act as the elec­toral area.

You may need to get pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance in un­der­stand­ing some of the im­pli­ca­tions of sev­er­al of the sec­tions in the leg­is­la­tion. It was a well cre­at­ed law and we must pay trib­ute to its orig­i­nal framers and ar­chi­tects who were Dr Car­son Charles, Hil­da Good­i­al, Nan Ram­goolam and Hugh Robert­son.Once you could achieve this, and the oth­er oblig­a­tions un­der the Act, you would have sat­is­fied all your statu­to­ry du­ties to your elec­torate.

Hav­ing achieved this, how­ev­er, you would have touched up­on the most ba­sic and el­e­men­tary re­quire­ments of your po­si­tion. To be an ef­fec­tive coun­cil­lor, how­ev­er, you would have to keep in mind that all your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are built up­on the premise that your over­all goal is to look af­ter the gen­er­al wel­fare of the res­i­dents and this would re­quire you to go way be­yond the con­fines of the Act.

In fact, if you study care­ful­ly the lo­cal gov­ern­ment man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, you would re­alise that it was built on the premise that the wider role of the coun­cil­lor is to look af­ter the gen­er­al wel­fare of his con­stituents.

• To be con­tin­ued