PS sure of budget $$ for Local Govt

SPEAKING on the day originally intended to be Budget Day in Trinidad and Tobago, acting Permanent Secretary in the Local Government Ministry, Terrance Jurawan has disclosed that the ministry expects sufficient funding in the 2004/2005 Budget to allow it to continue the Local Government reform process it started this year. Jurawan also disclosed that new Local Government legislation should be laid in Parliament within the next year.

On his return from Cuba a week ago, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said the Budget would be presented in Parliament in early October and top government officials have indicated October 4 was the most feasible, given Manning’s numerous local and overseas commitments. Manning will be in the United States from September 22-28, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly and meet with several key US policy makers. The latter meetings are reportedly the result of informal talks held between Manning and former US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger at Whitehall earlier this year.

Speaking with Newsday after the opening of an IPAC/CIDA Public Sector Capacity Building for Governance and Social Development Programme at the Ambassador Hotel, Jurawan said he was optimistic that Local Government would be well catered for in the Budget. “All the signs are there that we are going to get something to take us through to continue the reform process that we started this year,” he stated. The acting PS said regional consultations on Local Government reform have now been completed, and the ministry was seeking to use the feedback from these fora and other information to create a white paper on Local Government reform.

Looking at the future, however, Jurawan disclosed, “If the people endorse what we have, we are looking for a new Act. We are looking at a new Act maybe within a year, year and a half. We don’t want to go forward with an Act if we don’t have people with us. That has been one of the drawbacks of the last Act (Municipal Corporations Act 1990). “We were so interested in getting reforms that we went without making sure that all the stakeholders had their input.” He indicated that certain parts of the existing legislation would be reviewed and refined to ensure that it is in keeping with the objectives of the Local Government reform process.

Jurawan said he had received no reports from any of TT’s 14 Local Government bodies about chief executive officers being negligent in their duties. He said if CEOs were not implementing decisions of Council, “it might be because of resources,” but there was no information to verify whether or not this was so. “Our CEOs implement the decisions of Councils once the resources needed are within a legal framework,” Jurawan noted. Local Government Minister Rennie Dumas was carded to give the keynote address at Monday’s conference, but was reportedly unable to get a flight from Tobago on time due to weather systems associated with Hurricane Ivan.