The Local Government Caribbean Conference on Decentralisation opened yesterday with calls for a deepening of the process to allow these bodies to function independently of central government control.
Independent financing and broadening its base of services were among the ideas promoted in presentations by speakers at the opening session of the four-day meeting at the Ocean View Convention Centre.
City Mayor Hamilton Green in his lengthy welcoming remarks posited that no society could be effective governed from a central point.
According to Green, in addition to the provision of its traditional services local authorities should be at the forefront in providing for a social revival to arrest declining societal values.
Government and international agencies, he stated, should give more than lip service to decentralisation rather than just seeing it as a challenge to their authority and seeking to dampen its ascendancy.
Local governance, he contended, should be divorced from party politics or partisan political considerations.
Further, Green highlighted the need to change many of the colonial local government charters which still bound the working of the present system while urging colleagues to be wary of accepting ideas from western democracies without working out their relevance to local situations and conditions.
Green stated that decentralisation could not be developed oblivious to the real world.
President of the Caribbean Association of Local Government Authorities, Larel Thomas, highlighted the demand in several Caribbean societies for reform of local government while citing the need for local authorities to play a more central role in collaboration with Non-Governmental Organisations and the private sector.
Secretary of the Guyana Association of Local Authorities (GALA), City Councillor, Gwen McGowan, lauded the occasion as a historic one since the Commonwealth Caribbean had enjoyed a long history of local government involvement.
Highlighting the long tradition Guyana has had in the system, particularly involving prominent women folk, McGowan said that she was looking forward keenly to the deliberations which she hopes will set the stage for the re-distribution of authority.
According to McGowan, it is imperative that all persons become involved in promoting the growth of the local government idea.
United States Ambassador, Ronald Godard, highlighted the way in which the US could strengthen the local government process, including capacity building, institutional strengthening and the broadening of the democratic process via elections.
He further stressed his government's continued support for the process of the joint task force set up through the dialogue process between President Bharrat Jagdeo and Opposition Leader, Desmond Hoyte, which has been tasked with, among other things, pushing the idea of reform.
Minister within the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Clinton Collymore saw the occasion as historic since it seeks to examine decentralisation which he said is a feature of the government and which it is committed to ensuring so that local affairs are governed by the people.
The conference which is being sponsored by the National Democratic Institute in collaboration with the CALGA, GALA and the Universities of Guyana and the West Indies continues today.