The Local Government Service Commission

Sep 26, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The establishment of this Commission has suddenly become topical in recent months. Suddenly, when one considers that its existence was provided for in Cap 28.01 – Municipal and District Councils Act which was promulgated in 1969. See Section 97.
(1) There shall be a local Government Service Commission consisting of a chairman, a deputy chairman and three other members; and the Commission shall have such functions as are vested in it by this Act and any other law.
(2) In the exercise of its functions, the Commission shall not be subject to the direction or control of any authority.
More conveniently than otherwise the Commission was never brought to life, and certainly was never discussed at any public forum in some twenty-five years previously. So at this juncture, it may just be helpful for citizens to know of the critical importance of appointment of a highly professional Commission, whose membership individually and collectively must be capable of discharging the following tasks with the credibility that will be so desperately needed in the current confused, capricious and contentious environment in which Mayor & City Council of Georgetown operates.
Section 114 of the Act seen reads as follows:
114. The Commission may, with the approval of the President, make (17 of rules to provide for all matters incidental to the exercise of its functions under this Part and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing such rules may prescribe or provide for –
(a) the regulation of the procedure of the Commission;
(b) the recruitment, appointment and promotion of local government officers whose emoluments exceed eighteen thousand dollars per year;
(c) offences against discipline and penalties therefor;
(d) interdiction and suspension;
(e) disciplinary procedure;
(f) removal from office for offences against discipline or in the interest of local government;
(g) the time and manner of making appeals under section121.
It is in the light of this critically important human resource management and development undertaking that the skills and competencies of those selected to membership of the Commission must be clearly relevant.
So that when Section 98 specifies as follows:
The members of the Commission shall be appointed by the members. President from amongst such persons as appear to him to be suitably qualified; and the President shall appoint one of its numbers to be chairman and another to be deputy chairman. The implication must be that the President should be advised as to who is suitably qualified.
What is certain is that Section 99 disqualifies:
– any member of the National Assembly
– any councilor
– any local government officer
What is heartening is that Clause 103 of the Act provides that, after due inquiry, the President can remove a member of the Commission from office for inability to perform the functions of his office (whether arising from infirmity of body or mind or any other cause whatever) or for misbehaviour. Suspension from office is also applicable on the aforementioned grounds.
What, in these days, might appear to be a novel requirement, is the submission not later than the 1st day of March every year…. ‘to the Minister a report on its work during the preceding year; and the report shall, as soon as conveniently may be thereafter, be laid before the National Assembly’.
It is for debate however, whether this monitoring and decision-making construct, designed more than four decades ago, is appropriate to these times; whether the authoritarian environment in which the Commission must operate would not constrict the range of analytical decision-making that must reconcile with the wider scope allowed not only in other more recent legal provisions, but also conform to acceptable international norms and procedures of the day.
So that it is reasonable to entertain considerable reservations when as in Section 111 “The President may appoint a secretary to the Commission and such other stuff as may be necessary or desirable….” This, to the very Commission that is said to be empowered to recruit, appoint and promote local government officers.
A further anachronism is observed in Section 114 which insists again that ‘The Commission may, with the approval of The President make rules for all matters incidental to exercise of its functions….” as already mentioned. Where then is the relevant human resources management expertise to be found in that ‘Office’, that would be superior to that of the respective Commissioners. By now one can understand why the appointment of this Commission has been so long delayed. Its conception is much too outdated, indeed reflective of much of what is contained in the 483 pages of Chapter 28:01.
E.B. John

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