The Parliamentary Manage-ment Committee, which the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ralph Ramkarran, chairs, will hold its first meeting this afternoon.
The establishment of the committee is one of the menu of measures contained in the communiqué signed earlier this month by President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNCR leader, Robert Corbin.
The other members of the committee are Ministers Reepu Daman Persaud, Dr Henry Jeffrey, Manzoor Nadir, Carolyn Rodrigues and parliamentarians Feroze Mohamed, Clarissa Riehl, the Deputy Speaker - who will chair the committee in the absence of the Speaker - Lance Carberry, Amna Ally, Sheila Holder and Ravi Dev. Neither the Speaker nor the Deputy Speaker will have either an original or casting vote when chairing the committee. The motion establishing the committee, which was approved on May 2, says that the committee’s functions will be to consider and decide on matters relating to the business of the National Assembly, such other matters, which it may wish to consider and other matters referred to it by the National Assembly.
A senior official of the National Assembly explained to Stabroek News that among issues which the Committee would address was the adequacy of the time given to members to study legislation that the government wanted approved.
Other matters would be related to private members’ business and the adequacy of the facilities for parliamentarians to function effectively. The communiqué said that the committee would undertake an on-going review of the arrangements put in place by the government to facilitate its efficient functioning and that of the other parliamentary standing committees.
During the recently concluded Guyana Bar Association’s annual conference, the participants were severely critical of the late circulation of legislation and the lack of timely access to the legislation by persons likely to be affected by their provisions. They pointed out that the difficulty was compounded by the irregularity of the publication of the Official Gazette in which all legislation was required to be published.