President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNC/R leader Desmond Hoyte are to make changes to the committee on depressed communities so as to energise it.

Those changes are to be announced shortly and were agreed at a recent dialogue session.

The adjustments follow the announcement they made earlier this month that the committee was one about whose work they were disappointed. Appointed in April, the committee first identified four communities for priority attention and $60 million was set aside for various projects.

The communities identified were Buxton and Enterprise on the East Coast Demerara and Meten-Meer-Zorg and De Kinderen on the West Coast Demerara. Save for Buxton, which identified drainage of the area as a priority, the other villages picked electrification projects none of which has commenced and are unlikely to do so before next year. Hoyte blamed this on the Guyana Power and Light in which the government has a 50 per cent stake for failing to understand that it has to respond to political decisions by the government on areas to be electrified.

The other work that has been done by the committee is the designation of 64 communities across the ten regions as depressed. The communities were selected following visits to the various regions during which discussions were held with regional officials.

It has notified the regions about the communities and has sought their view on its choices based on criteria with which it has provided them.

And on the issue of parliamentary committees, the government and opposition parties are almost agreed on the terms of reference of the four sectoral standing committees but are still deadlocked on whether the committees should be chaired by members from the government side of the House whether they are ministers or back-benchers. The standing committees are expected to monitor the administration's performance in each of the areas they cover - foreign affairs, natural resources, economic services and social services.

The government contends that in the US Congress the ruling party has the majority on all the committees and chairs them as well.

The opposition believes that members of the opposition should chair the committees with a government back-bencher as the vice chairman. They contend that the US model is not relevant as there is a strict separation of powers in that no Cabinet officer sits in the legislature. They contend, too, that the US Congress is not constituted by the list system and that the congressmen and congresswomen and Senators of the ruling party can take a more independent stand than the parliamentarians on the government benches.

The deadlock has also prevented the constitution of the appointive committee to which will be delegated the functions of Parliament in consulting with relevant interest group on their representation on the four service commissions.

It is also holding up the constitution of the parliamentary management committee which President Jagdeo and Hoyte have agreed to set up to manage the agenda of the House.