RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Cor­po­ra­tions —in­clud­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion—have come un­der fire from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

De­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s thrust for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said cor­po­ra­tions are not func­tion­ing ef­fec­tive­ly, not­ing that he him­self al­most lost his house two months ago be­cause of a land­slip that the Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion could not fix.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the re­fur­bished $131 mil­lion Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do fa­cil­i­ty, Row­ley said lo­cal gov­ern­ment meant “putting se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the hands of lo­cal peo­ple.”

“This fa­cil­i­ty (Skin­ner Park) will even­tu­al­ly get ful­ly in the hands of the city of San Fer­nan­do to be main­tained, cleaned and pro­tect­ed by the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do, and they will have the re­sources to do that from two sources - the tax­es col­lect­ed from the com­mu­ni­ty and the al­lo­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He ques­tioned why de­trac­tors could not see the ben­e­fits of re­form that will ul­ti­mate­ly put more pow­er in the hands of re­gion­al bod­ies.

“Why is there a prob­lem with that? If you have a bet­ter mod­el, let me know but one thing is sure, the ex­ist­ing mod­el is not work­ing. They have elec­tions ever so ever and do the same thing, which is large­ly noth­ing,” he said.

Dr Row­ley chal­lenged cit­i­zens to see for them­selves, the in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the var­i­ous mu­nic­i­pal and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“Go and call your cor­po­ra­tion, any­where you live. Pe­nal/Debe don’t have gas to put in their ve­hi­cle so they can’t col­lect the garbage, but you are a cor­po­ra­tion, with a may­or and a chain. Ab­solute rub­bish. You go to Diego Mar­tin and you call the Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion to fix a pot­hole, and they say we don’t have any mon­ey,” Dr Row­ley said.

He then re­vealed his own per­son­al chal­lenges with the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

“I al­most lost my whole house two months ago be­cause the drain out­side my house is bro­ken. And the cor­po­ra­tion can’t fix it be­cause they haven’t got the sand and the ce­ment. And the wa­ter came through from the drain, in­to my house and un­der­mined my yard and I was just there in time to catch the land­slide be­fore it cut eight inch­es of sep­a­ra­tion in my yard,” he re­vealed.

Say­ing he even­tu­al­ly had to fix the prob­lem him­self, Dr Row­ley said if the cor­po­ra­tions had their own rev­enue, one of the ar­eas that will be ad­dressed by re­form, this would be avoid­ed.

“If a cor­po­ra­tion has a rev­enue stream, it can al­ways do more than if it was wait­ing for a hand­out for cash,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther re­vealed: “We are go­ing to San­gre Grande for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form to say to the peo­ple of San­gre Grande, it is ridicu­lous that you have a phys­i­cal venue but you can­not cut the grass be­cause your cor­po­ra­tion doesn’t have the gas to put in equip­ment or don’t have the equip­ment. And the grass grows so tall that the peo­ple can­not use the park. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is go­ing to put an end to that.”

He ex­plained: “We are go­ing to col­lect the Prop­er­ty Tax, small amounts from peo­ple, but it stays in the hands of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment, so there will be no ques­tion of a park in a com­mu­ni­ty where the grass grows undis­turbed and the peo­ple can’t use it.”

Con­sul­ta­tions on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form start­ed in San Fer­nan­do on De­cem­ber 15, 2015, and the last con­sul­ta­tion was com­plet­ed on April 27, 2016, in the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

In Au­gust 2016, Cab­i­net ap­proved the Draft Pol­i­cy on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form.

In June last year, the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Bill was passed with­out amend­ments. It in­volved changes to laws used in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions.

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.