Kevon Felmine

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Mar­lene Coudray says Gov­ern­ment will bring new leg­is­la­tion that will give more au­ton­o­my to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions should the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship re­turn to gov­ern­ment.

Re­ject­ing the PNM's plan to scrap the min­istry al­to­geth­er and have the Fi­nance Min­istry ab­sorb some of its func­tion, she as­sured her par­ty was com­mit­ted to lo­cal gov­ern­ment, say­ing it tends to the di­rect needs of cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the Poon­ah Recre­ation Ground pavil­ion yes­ter­day, she said even though the PNM pro­pos­es to de­vel­op a Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was al­ready help­ing rur­al com­mu­ni­ties through the up­lift­ment of recre­ation­al grounds, roads, drainage and dis­as­ter re­lief.

She added: "My first act as Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was to ta­ble the doc­u­ment on the mod­erni­sa­tion and de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and the new, which is to be put on the agen­da. Yes, we will give them more au­thor­i­ty and more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."We have al­ready start­ed to give them more fund­ing and I have al­ready in­di­cat­ed that un­der this gov­ern­ment, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions has nev­er had so much fund­ing be­fore but we need to make them more ac­count­able in terms of some of our plans.

"All the cor­po­ra­tions have mu­nic­i­pal plans and this is what your pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment pro­gramme is about, to pro­vide fund­ing in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished plans and guide­lines and you find peo­ple us­ing the mon­ey to do what­ev­er they want with­out over­sight."She added: "Our sys­tem pro­pos­es that there will be more au­ton­o­my but you can­not di­vorce au­ton­o­my from ac­count­abil­i­ty, from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, there­fore we are say­ing, yes, we will give them more.

"They need to have more au­thor­i­ty and more au­ton­o­my and as min­is­ter I have been sit­ting back and al­low­ing them to do their job."When they have is­sues and prob­lems, this is what the min­istry is here for, to sort out those is­sues and prob­lems."We do not in­ter­fere in their day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties, ex­cept in those cas­es where we see abuse of au­thor­i­ty. It hap­pens in some cor­po­ra­tion,"

Coudray said if the min­istry was re­moved, it would cre­ate a di­vide be­tween lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and cen­tral gov­ern­ment and hin­der to lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives abil­i­ty of deal with the every­day needs of the peo­ple.She said while she had not seen the PNM's plan on pa­per, it sug­gest­ed that it be­lieved that the min­istry was on­ly in­volved in dis­burs­ing mon­ey. She said it was al­so about en­sur­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty of pub­lic funds.

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The pavil­ion at the Poon­ah Recre­ation Ground was built at a cost of $1.5 mil­lion by Baksh Con­struc­tion Ser­vices.The project be­gan in March 2013 and was fin­ished in June 2014 and can hold 400 spec­ta­tors. Coudray said it would al­so be used as a home work cen­tre and plans were afoot to have a jog­ging track and chil­dren's play park built on the ground.