Chairman of the Special Select Committee of Parliament – which is to look at four local government bills and pave the way for elections – Basil Williams yesterday said that the committee will be meeting on Wednesday afternoon where he will propose that they first look at the Local Government Commission Bill.
APNU MP Williams, who became chairman of the committee after the combined opposition used its majority to out-vote the PPP/C’s nominee for the position, Local Government Minister, Ganga Persaud, expressed the hope that the parties can work together and quickly to ensure that the long-delayed elections are held.
Welcoming the statement last week by the four Western diplomatic missions calling for early local government polls, Williams said that at Wednesday’s meeting he will propose a methodology on how the committee should deal with the bill and he hopes that after they would have addressed the Commission Bill they would move on to the Fiscal Transfers Bill. He said those are the two substantive bills and the ones more important to paving the way for elections.
The Local Government Commission bill is intended to set up the Local Government Commission to deal with all matters related to regulation and staffing of local government organs and resolve disputes within and between such organs, in keeping with Article 78 (a) of the Constitution. The Commission’s specific functions include monitoring and reviewing the performance and the implementation of policies of local government organs.
The Fiscal Transfers Bill will set the formula for subventions from central government to local government organs.
At Wednesday’s meeting also, it is expected that the committee would come up with a time frame for its work in dealing with the four bills-the other two being the Local Government (Amendment) Bill and the Municipal and District Councils (Amendment) Bill.
Apart from Williams and Persaud, the other members of the committee are Presidential Advisor on Governance, Gail Teixeira, APNU’s Ronald Bulkan, Joseph Harmon and Amna Ally, AFC’s Dr Veerasammy Ramayya and the PPP/C’s Bibi Shadick and Neil Kumar.
At the committee’s first meeting late last year
