"There will be no room for fooling, bluffing, or idling. ILP councillors will have no excuses for failure."This was the vow of ILP's interim political leader Jack Warner as he closed off his party's local elections campaign at Endeavour, Chaguanas last night.Warner also lamented that more than $1,000 billion had been spent in T&T by three different governments, yet T&T was suffering from a lack of basic amenities such as water, security, proper roadsand drainage.
"After all this money, what do we have to show for it? How have the lives of the little people been made better? How has our social status changed? How closer are we to the alleviation of poverty? There are no positive answers to these questions because for 57 years we have been plagued with politics that practised a philosophy of misrepresentation," Warner said.He lamented there is not a single city, borough or corporation where all drains are regularly cleaned and water courses desilted.
He also said successive governments had failed to deal with crime."Crime is a plague and a scourge in all municipalities; no one is spared. Yet our borough police, corporation police and city police are pathetically understaffed..."He said the ILP would restore good governance from the level of local government.
"The ILP will introduce participatory democracy within an ILP-led corporation. No work will begin in your community unless a meeting is held to inform you of the scope of works for the project, the name of the contractor, the duration of the contract and any other area, which will have an impact on the quality of your life," he said.
Before final payment is made to contractors, he said, the municipality will again meet with the community to determine whether they are satisfied with the service which was provided in accordance with the scope."You must be included in all decisions as it relates to your community," he added.
"With respect to community projects, all councillors will go through basic training in fundamentals of project management. Progress of all projects will be closely monitored in terms of quality, time and cost. The status of all projects will be reported on a Web site to ensure transparency and accountability. In this way, you will hold all councillors accountable," Warner said.He also said the ILP would place litterbins in communities and hire litter wardens.
With respect to individual requests, Warner said the ILP had designed a software application to record and track every request of burgesses which will become available by November 1.