Bav­ina Sookdeo

Coun­cilors con­tin­u­ous­ly work to im­prove the life of the cit­i­zens with­in their com­mu­ni­ty. While coun­cilors can be in­de­pen­dent, they usu­al­ly rep­re­sent a Po­lit­i­cal Par­ty. Ac­cord­ing to one coun­cilor, "while the job of a teacher and a po­lice of­fi­cer may be clear cut, the job of a coun­cilor is one that is nev­er-end­ing."

Hen­ry Awong, coun­cilor of the Pi­paro/San Pe­dro/Tabaquite con­stituen­cy for sev­en years, told the Guardian, "there are ex­tra miles you have to go as a coun­cilors that are not de­fined in the Act or any where else. You are ex­pect­ed to at­tend every func­tion and give in what­ev­er way you can, even when fund­ing is in­ad­e­quate." The UNC coun­cilor, who will again vie to rep­re­sent his com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ued, "in­ad­e­quate fund­ing has al­ways been a chal­lenge and it is nev­er suf­fi­cient to ad­dress all the needs of every­one. As a coun­cilor you have to man­age your re­sources prop­er­ly."

How­ev­er, prop­er mon­ey man­age­ment is not the on­ly func­tion of a coun­cilor. As Paul Bharat, PNM Can­di­date for Cap-de-ville/Fan­ny Vil­lage states, "the pri­ma­ry func­tion of a coun­cilor is to serve the peo­ple of their Elec­toral Dis­trict with­in the con­fines of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. In or­der to do this prop­er­ly, one needs to first lis­ten to the peo­ple, act on their be­half, guide where is nec­es­sary and, just as im­por­tant, be the con­duit of their is­sues to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. "Hav­ing said that,�I must add that it is crit­i­cal as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to clear­ly de­fine the lim­i­ta­tions be­tween Cen­tral and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment's role, to not on­ly act on be­half of one's con­stituents but to al­so guide them in cir­cum­stances where­by the task at hand is not with­in one's ca­pac­i­ty as an elect­ed of­fi­cial and in so do­ing di­rect them to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty."

The can­di­date then gave an ex­am­ple - "A prime ex­am­ple is wa­ter and its au­tho­rized body WASA. Many folks be­lieve Coun­cil­lors have the au­thor­i­ty to dic­tate the ac­tiv­i­ties of of­fi­cials af­fil­i­at­ed to WASA but that is in­cor­rect. So the pub­lic will nor­mal­ly make a wa­ter re­lat­ed re­quest/com­plaint through their Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive who now ac­tu­al­ly has to do just what the cit­i­zens' rights al­lows them to do on their own which is to con­tact WASA and out­line the is­sues in or­der for re­dress. "Once one is suc­cess­ful at the polls and ac­cepts the ti­tle of Coun­cil­lor one will in turn ac­cept oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in ad­di­tion to those out­lined pre­vi­ous­ly. A re­view of the organogram of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as de­ter­mined by the Act of 1990 will clear­ly show the Coun­cil is sim­i­lar to a Board of Di­rec­tors re­port­ing to the Chair­man which in the case of Bor­oughs and Cities will be a May­or.

"There­fore, one is no longer just the voice of one's elec­torate but now a de­ci­sion mak­er with re­gards to the func­tion­al­i­ty of the� rel­e­vant Cor­po­ra­tion and in so do­ing be­come a de­ter­min­ing el­e­ment in re­la­tion to the en­tire con­stituen­cy. As a cit­i­zen my­self I pray con­stant­ly for such rep­re­sen­ta­tives to make de­ci­sions with­out per­son­al bias or par­ty re­lat­ed pol­i­cy...just make de­ci­sions to ben­e­fit the peo­ple whom are all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans." To make it sim­pler, Coun­cil­lors have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties such as dis­trib­ut­ing truck borne wa­ter to rur­al ar­eas where there is no wa­ter. He/she is al­so re­spon­si­ble for garbage dis­pos­al, san­i­tary land­fills, sew­er­age dis­pos­als and abate­ment of rats, cock­roach­es and oth­er pests. The Coun­cil­lor is sup­posed to deal with the pro­vi­sion, main­te­nance and con­trol of all Cor­po­ra­tion build­ings, ceme­ter­ies, parks, sa­van­nahs, recre­ation grounds, beach­es, swamps, forests and game sanc­tu­ar­ies.

He/she is re­spon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of all drains, ex­cept main and high­way wa­ter cours­es. The Coun­cil­lor is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the Ap­proval of Build­ing Plans and the main­te­nance of State prop­er­ty, po­lice sta­tions, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and health cen­tres. In ad­di­tion, he/she is re­spon­si­ble for the main­te­nance and con­trol of Homes for the Aged and Child Care Cen­tres which have been es­tab­lished by the Cor­po­ra­tion, while he is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the co­or­di­na­tion of lo­cal and re­gion­al trade fairs, ath­let­ic events and cul­tur­al dis­plays. Coun­cil­lors may al­so (for spe­cial cas­es) rep­re­sent an in­di­vid­ual or fam­i­ly. He will cam­paign on lo­cal is­sues and will at­tempt to ob­tain re­sources for his peo­ple. In ad­di­tion, he will en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­volve­ment in de­ci­sion mak­ing. The Coun­cil­lor al­so seeks to ed­u­cate his/her com­mu­ni­ty on ser­vices which are avail­able to them and de­ci­sions which af­fect them.

Why did these peo­ple de­cide to par­tic­i­pate in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions? Posed with the ques­tion Bharat re­lat­ed, "When I came in­to of­fice in 2003 my par­ty was in Gov­ern­ment...the cir­cum­stances be­ing dif­fer­ent to­day and be­ing lob­bied by oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties to join their ranks I deemed it the ho­n­ourable act to place my­self be­fore my par­ty for se­lec­tion. "In view of non-se­lec­tion it was my in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue work­ing with my par­ty through this tran­si­tion pe­ri­od to­ward the de­vel­op­ment of a tru­ly vi­able en­ti­ty with an in­ten­tion to once again serve the peo­ple of our twin is­land re­pub­lic at the high­est lev­el. Sec­ond­ly, I tru­ly love my home­town of Cap-de-Ville, Point Fortin and I be­lieve hav­ing sev­en years ex­pe­ri­ence cou­pled with my need to com­plete work in progress were my mo­ti­vat­ing

fac­tors." As for Awong, it was the peo­ple of his com­mu­ni­ty who asked him to rep­re­sent them at the lo­cal lev­el.