Mingo selected Chairman of LGC

Nov 02, 2017 News

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-Minister expresses optimistim despite concerns over political composition
Mortimer Mingo and Andrew Garnett have been selected to be Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Local Government Commission, (LGC) respectively.

Kaieteur News has learnt that the appointment of the Chairman and Vice Chairman followed a meeting with Local Government officials on Tuesday.
Last month, Guyana’s first-ever Local Government Commissioners were sworn in before President, David Granger.
The team consists of three members of the Local Government Commission (LGC) nominated by the Opposition Leader; three were nominated by the President, one nominated by the Minister of Communities and one representative of the trade union.
The current commission is made up of former Region 10 Chairman, Mortimer Mingo; former Region Four Chairman, Clement Corlette; senior executive of the Alliance For Change, Marlon Williams; educator, Joan Ann Romascindo; union leader, Andrew Garnett; former Town Clerk of Georgetown, Carol Sooba, and former Government Ministers, Norman Whittaker and Clinton Collymore.
The President’s appointees are Mingo, Corlette and Romascindo, while the Opposition-nominated members of the commission are Sooba, Whittaker and Collymore. Garnett represents the unions, while Williams is the appointee of Minister of Communities, Mr. Ronald Bulkan
In accordance to the Constitution, the establishment of the LGC is part of reinforcement of local democracy and regulating the management of communities and neighbourhoods.
The Local Government Commission is expected to have oversight over the local Government systems and provide for the autonomy of the systems.
The establishment of the commission has been in the pipeline for two years. However, weeks after it was set up, the political composition of the LGC has become a source of concern. There is a debate as to whether persons selected to sit on the commission can actually work together to resolve issues and find solutions to problems affecting the local government organs.
Explaining the logic behind the selection, Minister of Communities, Ronald Bulkan said yesterday that Government’s hands were tied in relation to the names presented by the opposition.
“We could not reject the names.”
Bulkan said that his personal preference would have been persons outside the political milieu, but the opposition submitted the names of persons that have close ties to the party.
“We were forced to put up names that would suitably match the names provided by the opposition.”
The Minister is still optimistic.
He believes that the commissioners will be able to work together to achieve its goal.
He pointed to the fact that the Union representative, Andrew Garnett has a wealth of knowledge of local governance. The Minister said that Garnett’s presence would bring about the necessary counterbalance needed at the table.
“I think Mr. Garnett will bring some amount of neutrality and partiality to the deliberations,” he said, adding that the Commission should not be prejudged as adversarial at this time.
Just last week, concerns were raised over the cooperation of the opposition members of Commission after they failed to attend the first meeting of the Commission.
Minister Bulkan had explained that the meeting was scheduled for Friday at 13:00 hours and this was communicated to all members in an email correspondence, following their swearing-in on Monday. The Minister, therefore expressed surprise that the three opposition-nominated members did not attend the meeting.
The meeting was scheduled for the selection of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman, as well as discussions for budgeting for the 2017-2020 period, establishment/identification of a building to facilitate the operations of the commission, employment of technical, clerical and administrative staff along with the drafting of a work plan.
When contacted, Commissioner Whittaker said that he had informed that the date and time were not convenient to him.
“I didn’t even know that the meeting was held. I thought that the Minister would have subsequently informed me at least, that notwithstanding your absence, we had this meeting,” Whittaker told Kaieteur News.
He stated that from his understanding, his other two colleagues also found the date and time inconvenient.
“Why go ahead? I didn’t see the urgency about it. The government did not treat the Local Government Commission coming into being with any urgency. Thanks to Civil Society and the Opposition who kept the pressure to have the Local Government Commission installed, then all of a sudden just after we took the oath, there is this urgency.”
“You had the Commission holding for two years so a week would not have made that big a difference,” Whittaker stated.
He viewed the Minister’s decision to go ahead with the meeting as political grandstanding.

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