Gail Alexan­der

The Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry is plan­ning the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion struc­ture for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form Bill which was passed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day and it’s in­tend­ed the re­form bill will be op­er­a­tionalised “with im­me­di­a­cy.”

This is ac­cord­ing to Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi.

The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Bill was passed with­out amend­ments. It in­volved changes to laws used in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions.

The bill was passed by votes from 15 Gov­ern­ment mem­bers and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The Op­po­si­tion ab­stained.

The same oc­curred when the bill was de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last month —passed with Gov­ern­ment sup­port, de­spite Op­po­si­tion ab­sten­tion.

Pas­sage of the bill rep­re­sent­ed the fruition of years of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM’s) ef­forts on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form since the tenures of for­mer Min­is­ters Hazel Man­ning and the late Franklin Khan. The bill now has to be pro­claimed.

It al­so pro­vides for a role for the Fi­nance Min­istry to have over­sight of cer­tain as­pects con­cern­ing cor­po­ra­tions’ fi­nan­cial mat­ters and in set­ting (with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer) salaries and terms and con­di­tions for of­fi­cials.

Un­der the bill, coun­cil­lors, may­ors and al­der­men will be­come full-time of­fi­cials and the next set of such of­fi­cials af­ter the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions will be full-time.

The bill al­so in­clud­ed a pro­vi­sion for re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to col­lect res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax and re­tain it for their op­er­a­tions.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance re­cent­ly pro­ject­ed it will be­gin be­fore De­cem­ber 31.

Some ex­pect the start date to be in the 2023 Bud­get in Oc­to­ber.

On Guardian Me­dia queries on how long it will take for cor­po­ra­tions to start us­ing the bill’s pro­vi­sions in­clud­ing the Fi­nance Min­istry set­ting terms for cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials, Al-Rawi said, “We are plan­ning the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion sched­ule.”

While the bill was passed with­out amend­ments, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine had pre­sent­ed amend­ments to en­sure cor­po­ra­tions present ac­counts/au­dit­ed state­ments on time.

In a re­cent de­bate, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad and De­onar­ine ex­pressed con­cern about cor­po­ra­tions’ ac­count­abil­i­ty, not­ing their years of late sub­mis­sion of fi­nan­cial ac­counts and state­ments.

They queried plac­ing prop­er­ty tax­es in cor­po­ra­tions’ hands amid this.

At Tues­day’s fi­nal ex­am­i­na­tions of the bill, both re­it­er­at­ed their con­cerns. De­onar­ine said the most they could do at the lev­el of Par­lia­men­tary fi­nan­cial com­mit­tees to com­pel cor­po­ra­tions to change the sit­u­a­tion was to “get rough with them.” She ini­tial­ly de­clined to with­draw her amend­ments but did so af­ter Al-Rawi point­ed out the pro­pos­als would re­quire “touch­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion” and he couldn’t change the bill as the Op­po­si­tion wasn’t pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary two-third vote sup­port to change it.

He sought to give as­sur­ances on the sit­u­a­tion where up­com­ing re­form was in­volved. He said the process re­form is afoot.

Al-Rawi said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter had is­sued a cir­cu­lar de­mand­ing all statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and sim­i­lar agen­cies sub­mit au­dit­ed and man­age­ment ac­counts an­nu­al­ly.

He said De­onar­ine’s con­cerns were shared by Gov­ern­ment but it lacked Op­po­si­tion sup­port “to achieve the lev­el of re­form we want. You have all 15 votes on (Gov­ern­ment side), nine in the In­de­pen­dents’ dis­cre­tion and all UNC is say­ing ‘no,’ so we can on­ly do what we can.”

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