DECENTRALIZATION IS THE WAY TO GO

Sep 04, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The decision to establish an Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Berbice is a welcome one, and is just the sort of decentralization that needs to be undertaken and expanded. Such an office will allow for quicker decisions from that office and will help to improve the prosecution process.
Another positive, important development is the establishment of a commercial registry away from the Deeds Registry. This registry will allow for greater confidence to be reposed in the efficiency of the commercial court.
A major deterrent to foreign investment is the commercial dispute-settlement mechanism. When international investors learn how long it can take for a normal matter to make its way through our court system, they will be disinclined to invest in Guyana.
No one wants to enter into a business venture and then to find that if one party does not fulfill his contractual obligation that it takes years for any legal challenge to be heard.
The establishment of a commercial court was a visionary move by the ruling administration to deal with this problem, and to allow for business-related disputes to have faster passage through the court system, thereby improving the business climate and providing greater confidence to investors.
This confidence is going to be further boosted by the decision to migrate the commercial registry away from the Deeds Registry. What this means in practical terms is that commercial transactions no longer have to be bogged down in the Deeds Registry, and this will allow for speedier transactions and settlement of disputes.
Once the commercial court and its registry are physically separated from the existing registries, then commercial transactions are going to be processed more expeditiously.
In the past, the idea was that consolidation of services would achieve savings in cost. Under this belief, it was opined that it was best to lump services under one administrative umbrella. Unfortunately, consolidation led to bloating, with the creation of many huge and inefficient administrative bureaucracies.
The new approach seems to be based on the idea that smaller units would be more flexible and lead to improved managerial and operational efficiency.  This model needs to be replicated throughout the system of public administration. When complemented with decentralization, the results will mean that citizens would be better able to access government and other public services.
The real bugbears for persons living outside of Georgetown are obtaining birth certificates and passports. There is no reason these services cannot be provided within each of the counties.
A person living in Corriverton should not have to leave home at four in the morning to travel to the city at great expense in order to obtain a passport. Yet this is exactly what happens daily. Persons also have to leave home early in the morning and sometimes have to overnight in the city in order to obtain their birth certificates.
While a birth certificate can be obtained through the post, this takes a long time, and so many persons prefer to travel to the city and join a line in order to be able to get the record of their birth in a reasonable time.
Passports and birth certificates are the two things that almost every citizen would have to obtain, and therefore there is an urgent need to have these services more accessible – near to where people live.
With computerized systems there is no reason why this cannot happen before the end of the year.  It does, however, require political will for the changes to be made.
One can appreciate that the traditional manner of recording births is to enter the details into huge registers. This is a manual system and therefore when someone applies for a birth certificate, these registers have to be taken down and the individual details confirmed. This limits the amount of certificates which can be issued in any one day.
However, if all the registers were microfilmed and then placed on computer servers, it would mean that numerous applications for certificates can be verified at any one time. This is something that needs to be done urgently. Also, if the cost of a replacement birth certificate is increased to $1000, a great many persons would not lose their originals so easily, and therefore not have to encumber the system with replacement applications.
The passport system may equally require some form of manual checks of cards. Here, too, a system of computerizing the records would ensure that the relevant checks are done faster, thereby reducing the processing time and the number of applications which can be handled at any one time.
But this should not prevent the decentralizing of the process. What should happen is that persons should be allowed to submit their applications and have their photographs taken electronically in the county where they reside. These applications should then be sent to the city under escort for processing. The completed passport would then be sent back to the county for distribution. Or the entire process can be done electronically, thereby avoiding the physical movement of documents and passports. Surely this cannot be rocket science.
Decentralizing these services will save persons living outside of the city a great deal of time and a great deal of money. It will make them also feel that government services are more accessible to them. This is the direction in which the government should be moving.

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