Would Mr Thakur 'Mike' Persaud please stand up and take a bow. That is what one felt like saying after reading the report [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] by Ms Miranda La Rose in last Saturday's edition of Stabroek News which described the work of the Better Hope/Vryheid's Lust Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) which has been in office for nine years under the chairmanship of Mr Persaud.
To describe Mr Persaud's job as difficult and thankless would be an understatement. This NDC is one of the larger ones encompassing a population of some 18,000 people. After nine years in office there are only ten councillors of the original quota of eighteen. "It is a real fight to keep the council functioning" Mr Persaud said, explaining that elected councillors and their replacements over the years had either emigrated, died or opted out for various reasons.
Mr Persaud receives a stipend of $5,000 a month as chairman. He does this job after working hours on weekdays and half day on Saturdays and Sundays. He says he is inundated with queries and complaints by residents everywhere he goes. "There are more curses than compliments out there" he said. The council's job is onerous and ranges from maintaining two well-kept community centres which have sports grounds, upkeeping a nursery school and a library, replacing old pipelines (it bought some equipment for this purpose)and dealing with squatters to upgrading the roads. It has not been able to solve problems of drainage and garbage disposal, though there has been some improvement with the former.
Remarkably, the council collects 85 per cent of its rates and taxes from residents, only 10 per cent of which goes to administrative and current expenditure. The rest goes to capital works. It gets a $3 million subvention from government but its budget this year is $30 million. Each year, the council conducts a mid year budget review to assess works and see where improvements could be made. Councillors are assigned responsibilities for various villages or wards and they are expected to place the problems of those areas before the council when it meets.
There are many other irritants that Mr Persaud has to deal with. Businesses, often highly unsuitable ones like liquor restaurants, mushroom overnight without any approval by the council and it is hard to deal with the miscreants. On one occasion when a man wanted to build a horse pen and the chairman tried to deal with the matter he said that people pelted his house for a whole week at night. "The laws are there but the problem is one of enforcement" he said. Stray animals are another major problem.
Here is a council, led by a dedicated man, trying to do a difficult job with limited funds, personnel and powers. It is comforting to know that there are still some public spirited citizens around who do what is essentially a voluntary job for the benefit of their community. The problem is to devise a system that will encourage more such people to emerge and give them the powers and the revenue to really get things done. After nine years with no elections many local governments are not functioning at all well. Mr Persaud and his council are the exception, and even they face very serious problems.