Yvonne?Ba­boolal

As sure as night fol­lows day, the PNM gov­ern­ment is go­ing to re­form lo­cal gov­ern­ment to bring pow­er to the peo­ple. The par­ty is ready to de­liv­er, chair­man and Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Franklin Khan de­clared yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, at the of­fi­cial launch of the PNM's lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

"It is re­al and it will hap­pen. Just as night fol­lows day, lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is go­ing to hap­pen this time," he said.

Khan said al­though lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form has been bandied around for decades, it is dif­fer­ent this time be­cause Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has giv­en his per­son­al com­mit­ment to the cause. The new leg­is­la­tion will em­pow­er lo­cal re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to gov­ern their own re­gions, like re­gion­al gov­ern­ments.

The PNM's cam­paign for the No­vem­ber 28 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions will fo­cus on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, he said.

"The PNM is in elec­tion mode once again and we are red and ready," he said.

At yes­ter­day's con­ven­tion and cam­paign launch, the par­ty pre­sent­ed 137 can­di­dates to con­test in 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Khan said sur­veys com­mis­sioned by the PNM showed that al­most 100 per cent of those ques­tioned be­lieve lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is re­quired.

Be­tween De­cem­ber 2015 and April 2016, the par­ty held 14 lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form con­sul­ta­tions in each re­gion. Khan said leg­is­la­tion to re­form lo­cal gov­ern­ment has al­ready been draft­ed by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young and with­in the first half of 2017 it will be tabled in Par­lia­ment, then put be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee for dis­cus­sion.

He said whether it is a PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion, like Diego Mar­tin, or a UNC-con­trolled one like Siparia, all will be giv­en the same pow­er to gov­ern their spe­cif­ic ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas. He said there will be no need for a lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, mak­ing him prob­a­bly the on­ly min­is­ter de­ter­mined to work him­self out of a job.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies will be giv­en a new struc­ture, ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing and in­creased man­pow­er to han­dle their new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

They will have a re­la­tion­ship with the Min­istry of Fi­nance sim­i­lar to that of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and de­vel­op their own plans and poli­cies for their re­spec­tive re­gions, the min­is­ter said.

"That's what you call de­vo­lu­tion of pow­er," Khan said.

Cor­po­ra­tions will be al­lowed to re­tain cer­tain tax­es col­lect­ed with­in their bound­aries and coun­cil­lors will be em­ployed full time.

Khan said as promised in its 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion man­i­festo, the PNM plans to re­move all the red tape and bu­reau­cra­cy that pre­vents re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions from do­ing their work in an ef­fi­cient man­ner.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will be giv­en statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty to han­dle a broad range of new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing:

�2 So­cial ser­vices de­liv­ery

�2 School main­te­nance

�2 Main­te­nance of recre­ation grounds

�2 Lo­cal tourism

Peo­ple with­in each cor­po­ra­tion will be con­tract­ed to do small projects in their ar­eas.

Khan said a to­tal of 1,400 new mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers will be em­ployed to do com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. That breaks down to 100 new mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers in each cor­po­ra­tion, with the re­cruits com­ing from their own ar­eas.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will al­so be giv­en more pow­er to han­dle dis­as­ters in their ar­eas and will be man­dat­ed to en­gage non-gov­ern­men­tal and com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions in the de­ci­sion mak­ing process.

Khan said cor­po­ra­tions are, at present, un­der­sourced and un­der­staffed and a new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture will be put in place to im­ple­ment the added re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

This will re­sult in job cre­ation as young en­gi­neers, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors and oth­er grad­u­ates will be ab­sorbed in­to the new lo­cal gov­ern­ment struc­ture, he said.