Raphael John-Lall

For­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment and a for­mer prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr Bhoe Tewarie be­lieves that once lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is im­ple­ment­ed, T&T can har­ness its as­set base which in­cludes oil, gas, agri­cul­ture and oth­er as­sets to de­vel­op the coun­try.

“T&T is a small coun­try with gen­uine as­sets and a fair range of re­sources apart from oil and nat­ur­al gas and petro­chem­i­cals. There are land as­sets, en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sets, peo­ple at a range of ed­u­ca­tion­al lev­els ca­pa­ble of learn­ing, grow­ing and de­vel­op­ing skills, know-how and do-how. Some of these have gen­uine en­tre­pre­neur­ial tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty and the ca­pac­i­ty for in­no­va­tion in a num­ber of spheres such as agri­cul­ture, sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, cul­ture, the arts, ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty life and de­vel­op­ment,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He added that a lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem that func­tions ef­fi­cient­ly will al­low the coun­try’s lead­ers and plan­ners to go in­to com­mu­ni­ties to dis­cuss eco­nom­ic prob­lems and so­lu­tions.

“If you go in­to com­mu­ni­ties and talk to peo­ple, they have thoughts, ideas, a point of view on prob­lems and they of­fer so­lu­tions. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment can be a cat­a­lyst in lever­ag­ing as­sets in re­gions of 100,000 peo­ple or so. They can be crit­i­cal in com­mu­ni­ty plan­ning and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment, and cen­tral gov­ern­ment work­ing to­geth­er for and with the peo­ple, can lever­age such as­sets and make hu­man, eco­nom­ic and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment hap­pen.”

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions will take place on Au­gust 14.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that the main mes­sage that the Gov­ern­ment will be send­ing on the elec­tion plat­form is lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form

“If you’re for that, you should vote PNM. If you don’t agree it’s wor­thy of your vote and vote UNC, you’re say­ing you want it to re­main as it is. Win, lose or draw our mis­sion is to con­tin­ue to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life in T&T by im­prov­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery,” Row­ley said at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Mal­abar Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in June.

Fund­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment

On the is­sue of prop­er­ty tax, Tewarie said he be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment can use lo­cal gov­ern­ment struc­tures to im­ple­ment the new tax, but he qual­i­fies that by say­ing that there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty be­fore that hap­pens.

“Yes, it makes sense for that to hap­pen, but they would need re­sources to do that well and a sys­tem of ac­count­abil­i­ty that works to en­sure that mon­ey is well spent. If this is used to fund op­er­a­tions i.e. re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, there should be sep­a­rate fund­ing for de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture. If the funds gen­er­at­ed from prop­er­ty tax can­not meet re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, that then presents the is­sue of sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing or ad­min­is­tra­tive re­struc­tur­ing and ra­tio­nal­iza­tion for greater ef­fec­tive­ness in de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices. New tax rev­enue should be part of ef­fec­tive al­lo­ca­tion and dis­burse­ment to ef­fec­tive lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for.”

De­vel­op­ment Plan­ning

Tewarie–who served as the Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, En­ter­prise and Tourism in the 1986 to 1991 ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion–spoke about how map­ping the coun­try can be de­vel­oped at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el.

“There is a Hu­man De­vel­op­ment At­las that ad­dress­es the de­mo­graph­ics, so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tion of cit­i­zens in all 14 re­gions, and iden­ti­fies re­sources so that it iden­ti­fies de­fi­cien­cies and what needs to be done. Some 100,000 peo­ple in a re­gion mean 25,000 homes, about 40 com­mu­ni­ties (there are about 600 in T&T) a range of busi­ness­es, com­mu­ni­ty as­sets, busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore, and pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ments to be made. A coun­try needs macro strate­gies for growth but al­so mi­cro strate­gies.”

He al­so spoke about the bu­reau­crat­ic as­pects of lo­cal gov­ern­ment say­ing that the ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tem to the pop­u­la­tion is weak which is usu­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for poor re­sults.

“Four­teen lo­cal gov­ern­ments should make the task of each lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­liv­er­ing goods and ser­vices to about 100,000 peo­ple each, easy but it does not work well. There should be a di­vi­sion of labour be­tween lo­cal and cen­tral gov­ern­ment, but al­so col­lab­o­ra­tion and syn­er­gies to serve peo­ple well and to make gov­er­nance good and gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery ef­fec­tive but it does not hap­pen con­sis­tent­ly. Cen­tral gov­ern­ment min­istries and lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions of­ten quar­rel and the ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tem for gov­er­nance and to the elec­torate is weak.”

He spoke about the im­por­tance of de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion as a so­lu­tion to an un­pro­duc­tive bu­reau­cra­cy.

“For lo­cal gov­ern­ment to work well, de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion must be re­al. De­vo­lu­tion of pow­er with ac­count­abil­i­ty must take place, lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment strate­gies must be dri­ven, guid­ed and mon­i­tored in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Plan­ning, and lo­cal gov­ern­ment must be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced.

“The Na­tion­al Spa­tial De­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy laid in Par­lia­ment in 2013, out­lines the role of cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of land space with sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the en­vi­ron­ment.”

He al­so be­lieves that the lack of ac­tion on the part of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments has led to the cur­rent in­ef­fi­cient lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem the coun­try has to­day.

“We have missed the boat with our han­dling of both cen­tral gov­ern­ment and lo­cal gov­ern­ment. The rea­son for this is that our pol­i­tics are too par­ti­san, di­vi­sive and an­tag­o­nis­tic.

“Cen­tral gov­ern­ment is too dom­i­nant and au­thor­i­tar­i­an in the gov­ern­ing process, and lo­cal gov­ern­ment has nev­er had the re­sources, the au­ton­o­my, the com­pe­tence, the pow­er and the where­with­al to do what needs to be done for the com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple that they rep­re­sent. The re­sult is per­va­sive gov­er­nance fail­ure across the board and cit­i­zen dis­sat­is­fac­tion every­where.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that there needs to be a link be­tween the macro­eco­nom­ic and mi­cro­eco­nom­ic strate­gies in plan­ning the way for­ward.

“We need to re­think our ap­proach to de­vel­op­ment, be more thought­ful in our ap­proach to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and much more alert to sus­tain­abil­i­ty is­sues. And we need to ap­pre­ci­ate that both macro and mi­cro-eco­nom­ic strate­gies are nec­es­sary and that col­lab­o­ra­tion, co­op­er­a­tion and syn­er­gy can make a big dif­fer­ence.”