Deputy Mayor calls for Local Government reform

DEPUTY MAYOR of Chaguanas  Orlando Nagessar says there is need for drastic reform of Local Government. He made the observation after returning from a two-week Local Government convention in Paris. Nagessar was part of a delegation headed by Local Government Minister Rennie Dumas and 15 members of the various regional corporations. Nagessar said after being exposed to the operating standards of local governments in other countries, he is convinced that this country is a long way off from the standards achieved in other countries. “What we have here is a tease compared to what is evident in developed countries worldwide. We are far from there in terms of the required local government regime,” Nagessar said.

He cited as an example the fact that in some developed countries the central government served as an overseer of its operations, while the local government took full charge and control of what went on within a city regarding control of allocated monies inclusive of spending. “We are far off in terms of how other countries government bodies dealt with ghettos in the city, housing arrangements, keeping the city streets clean and vagrant free, waste control, building, repairing and maintenance of roads and traffic management,” Nagessar said. He said development of a city demanded a tremendous amount of resources, most of which is provided by the business sector whose financial assistance sometimes ran into the billions of dollars. He urged that system be adopted locally. Nagessar, a former Chaguanas Mayor, said it was evident that in large countries, the local government body played a major role helping achieve developed status.

“They control the cities by implementing their own tax system, they manage everything possible, for example traffic and roads.” He said the point that Trinidad was far from that practice incurred by countries worldwide saying, here in Trinidad we depend on the central government for handouts . . . we go cap in hand begging for things to be done. We don’t have the full measure of control needed to run our boroughs. “The freedom of trust is seriously lacking in our local government body and we need to establish that both efficiently and effectively before anything positive can be done,” he added. Nagessar suggested that the local government body within Trinidad should take example from Tobago. “Tobago, is what a local government should be, although Tobago still depends on Trinidad for their monies, they have their own secretary and they control their own spending and everything, we are far from that,” he said. Nagessar said at the Paris convention, delegates attended several workshops and in the near future they will meet with Minister Dumas to report on these workshops.