Dear Editor,
Mr Royston King, recently appointed Town Clerk of the Mayor & City Council was seen on TV making an informative presentation of his agenda for upgrading the capacity of the council’s officers and employees to deliver a better level of services and products. He very correctly adverted to a programme of substantial training. It was not clear, however, who would supply the relevant expertise for such exercises.
His remarks also appeared to suggest some restructuring of operational systems. Again, however, there was little indication of either council’s involvement in, or indeed approval of, the announced proposals, admirable as they might have been. It was at this juncture that one was reminded of the Burrowes’ Commission of Inquiry Report which was well received by the M&CC in 2009. Once again it seems appropriate for the councillors to revisit that report’s recommendations for guidance in respect of the substantive rehabilitation of what is currently a dysfunctional organisation.
Any analysis of the existing competencies of the M&CC would show that the latter cannot heal themselves – a situation to which the Minister of Communities must pay urgent attention, and preferably address the endemic issues before the upcoming local government elections.
A priority must be the substantive upgrading of a chronically inadequate human resources management function. In this connection there should be insistence that the Minister arranges for the establishment of the Local Government Commission as a matter of priority.
Also of relevance is examination of the authority relationship between the office of the Town Clerk and the Mayor and the Councillors as provided for in the Municipal and District Councils Act, promulgated at a time when all the players in central government and local government were on the most compatible terms. As a consequence they did not foresee the implications of the act limiting the Mayor to merely chairing meetings of the council. That the act compounded this weakness by providing for the Town Clerk to advise the council (with no provision for the council’s reaction) has caused over long years a continuous disaggregation of the authority structure, and descent into rancourous interactions unbefitting of the institution which purports to manage the capital city, Georgetown.
The above faultlines and more, are examined extensively by the Burrowes Inquiry Report which I again commend to the Minister of Communities.
There are also the critically important results of the IDB donor-funded Urban Development Programme to be resuscitated. This was a carefully constructed technological exercise across the municipalities of Corriverton, Rose Hall, New Amsterdam, Georgetown, Linden, Anna Regina for each of which a new system of rates and taxes was computed. The exercise was scuttled and forty or more participants in the programme peremptorily dismissed, and the objective of creating a new Valuation Unit and prospective property values callously abandoned.
The computerised system of valuation would have been beneficially applied to new multi-storeyed properties, to most, if not all of which the old value of rates and taxes still apply.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
