Local Government Bill passed without UNC

THE OPPOSITION voted against it but on Tuesday night the Government passed the Act to Amend the Municipal Corporations Act 1990 in the Senate to legitimise an extension of the life of regional corporations from July 2002 to July 2003 as necessitated by the non-sitting of Parliament last year.

The Bill also extends the interval between the date of a local government election and the appointing of aldermen, from the current three days to 10 days. The Opposition alleged the Government was using the CEPEP programme to dubiously fund its upcoming campaign for local government elections and for political patronage.  Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate, Wade Mark, said Prime Minister Patrick Manning has said he wanted to increase the $44 million spent so far on CEPEP, a figure which Mark said could eventually reach $176 million over a year, and half-billion dollars ($500 million) over the coming three years. “Yet you want to send home 9,000 Caroni workers? (PNM) Councillors are now CEPEP advisers and get contracts for $600,000 in three months, and you are asking us to extend the life of local government bodies?”. 

Mark said the CEPEP programme was undermining the jobs of thousands of daily-paid workers in local government. Hitting CEPEP, he added: “These workers are a vote-bank for the PNM. If you want to be a Cepep worker you need a PNM card”. He added: “What skills can a young man gain from cutting grass and painting stones?”.  Mark read out the names of several PNM councillors appointed as council “advisers” since the expiry of their term of office as councillor, who he said had received large contracts to work for CEPEP. “Roopchand Balliram and Philip Salazar, advisers from the Siparia Regional Corporation, formed a company called Rupee Contracting Services which received $545,288. Jennifer Marrishaw, an adviser from San Fernando City Corporation formed a company, Marrishaw Maintenance Services, and she got $393,342 in three months. In 12 months that would be $1.2 million — to campaign, using taxpayers money in a most illegal and illegitimate way to campaign (for local government elections). “Darian Marcel, former chairman of the Diego Martin Regional Corporation, and co-owner, Wendell Stephenson, ex-St James West councillor, formed a company called Darwin Limited and they received $551,664...All I am seeing is a PNM frenzy.” He accused the PNM of a form of apartheid in allocating CEPEP contracts.

Mark accused the PNM Government of discriminating against UNC areas in allocation of truck-borne water and of street-lights even claiming that the PNM had installed lights on a street which they later found out to be a UNC area and then dismantled and removed them. Mark concluded that local government would only get respect when it was enshrined in the national Constitution. Complaining that millions were still owed to contractors who had done work under the UNC Government, Mark said: “My information is that the only reason the State is not paying the money is because some high officials want a kick-back, some want 10 percent, some want 20 percent.”  During the contribution of his colleague Opposition Senator Jennifer Jones Kernahan, Mark accused the Government of visible disinterest in local government, shouting across the benches: “Go home and sleep! You look tired.”