Coun­cil­lors can­not per­form if they have no re­sources for projects.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment as she slammed Gov­ern­ment for ap­par­ent­ly starv­ing UNC-led cor­po­ra­tions of re­sources.

Speak­ing at a UNC meet­ing held at Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School on Tues­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there was an ur­ban bias in re­source dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“Cor­po­ra­tions be­ing starved for re­sources and un­der this Gov­ern­ment...there has been de­lib­er­ate star­va­tion of Op­po­si­tion con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions of funds,” she said.

The sit­u­a­tion is so bad that in Sep­tem­ber 2018, some lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors were evict­ed from their of­fices be­cause they could not pay their rent,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“The chair­men of four re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der the UNC said de­lays by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in re­leas­ing re­cur­ring ex­pen­di­ture to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions over the past fi­nan­cial year is ham­per­ing the op­er­a­tions of sev­er­al re­gion­als bod­ies since they are un­able to pay for goods and ser­vices or car­ry out projects,” she added.

While the Op­po­si­tion wel­comed lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said there were flaws in the bill laid in Par­lia­ment last May.

“When we ex­am­ined the bill, we found a num­ber of is­sues. We be­lieve that Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions must be em­pow­ered, and we agree with mov­ing for­ward with the re­form of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, we be­lieve there must be true re­form of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem,” she said.

Say­ing the bill should not be rushed, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the bill pro­vides for the in­ser­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to take con­trol of set­ting the re­mu­ner­a­tion of may­ors, al­der­men and coun­cil­lors.

“ We do not be­lieve that a politi­cian should be giv­en dis­cre­tionary pow­er to set the salaries of his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. The bill fails to ad­dress the thorny is­sue of equal­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and equal­i­ty of the vote - the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to con­tin­ue a sys­tem which al­lows some coun­cil­lors to rep­re­sent as few as 2,500 vot­ers while re­quir­ing oth­er coun­cil­lors to rep­re­sent more than 12,000 vot­ers” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said there is no pro­vi­sion for a tie-break­er.

“We wit­nessed the un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sit­u­a­tion in the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in the last Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion where the PNM im­prop­er­ly seized the pow­er of the cor­po­ra­tion by al­low­ing the for­mer chair­man to be the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer,” she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­tend­ed that the pro­vi­sion for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment coun­cils to be col­lec­tors of prop­er­ty tax on res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties on­ly will cre­ate a dual col­lec­tion sys­tem which could re­sult in con­fu­sion.

“There is no pro­vi­sion for Con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion as for ex­am­ple has been done with re­spect to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” she added.

She not­ed that the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bill sought to ex­tend the coun­cil­lor po­si­tions to full time and set up the cor­po­ra­tions to start re­ceiv­ing Prop­er­ty Tax con­tri­bu­tions which would en­tail new train­ing and po­si­tions.

“Per­haps prop­er­ly re­sourc­ing the cor­po­ra­tions over the last four years would have a more ide­al so­lu­tion. These changes should have been in­tro­duced in phas­es as op­posed to a com­plete over­haul,” she said.

To guar­an­tee equal vot­ing pow­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the dis­tri­b­u­tion of seats must be re­viewed at least every ten years, prefer­ably out­side elec­tion pe­ri­ods.

“This will re­move the dis­pro­por­tion­ate elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tion that cur­rent­ly ex­ists that has tra­di­tion­al­ly been based on a pref­er­ence for ur­ban ar­eas over rur­al ar­eas,” she added.

She con­tend­ed that this ur­ban bias has re­sult­ed in rur­al ar­eas be­ing de­prived of ad­e­quate re­sources to ser­vice those com­mu­ni­ties.