Two revealing meetings were held over the last two weeks in relation to local government at which the subject minister Mr Kellawan Lall presided. At the first, a two-day seminar for officials responsible for carrying out local government projects, Mr Lall addressed frontally the longstanding concern about the perception of widespread corruption in local government. "A lot of you know that the stigma of corruption at the local level has been very rife in various areas", he admonished, while adding that "sometimes these impressions are not true". He also emphasized the need for regional officials to be well acquainted with the tender board proceedings so that they would be properly equipped to judge when they were being made fools of by contractors. He also raised the spectre of blacklisting contractors who do shoddy work and adverted to the problems that arise through poor design of work which then necessitates multiple variations in the contract. Monitoring and evaluation were other weaknesses identified by Mr Lall and he argued, as others in his position have argued, that information such as the bills of quantities should be made readily available to the public so that citizens could do their own policing. Another sore point for the minister was the absence of security for contracts.
At a second forum at the close of the week for regional chairmen, vice chairmen and regional executive officers, Mr Lall continued in the same vein and pointed out that local government will benefit from a large sum over the next five years via funds allocated to his ministry.
There will be no disagreement with Mr Lall's statement about the need to address the perception of corruption. The thirteen years since the last local government elections have been lost years as they relate to accountability for sums spent on local government projects and value for money.
The issue that underpins all of this is that since 1994 billions of dollars have been poured into projects where regional and local government councils have some oversight responsibility. As quoted by the Government Information Agency, Mr Lall pointed to this role. "Regional governments actually substitute for central government… the work that Regional Democratic Councils do cause them to interact with the public on behalf of the government". But increasingly, neighbourhood democratic councils in particular have been unable to perform this intermediation role. The fact that local government elections have not been held since 1994 has left these councils ossified, under-resourced and depleted of the motivation and enthusiasm needed to discharge their duties.
The most potent means of transforming this barren landscape is by the urgent convening of local government elections. The split in the local government system has led to the curious circumstance where regional democratic councils have been renewed regularly (92, 97, 2001 and 2006) while the same NDCs have been in place since 1994 except for those which have been dissolved and replaced by interim bodies because of the problems referred to.
To enable his objectives to be met Mr Lall would have to ensure that the bipartisan dialogue between Messrs Collymore and Alexander is swiftly wrapped up so the necessary legislative and other changes can be made for local government elections. The other obvious hurdle would be whether a fresh house-to-house registration exercise should be conducted before these elections are held.
In recent months Stabroek News has published several reports on projects where substandard work was done or where local government failed to rise to the challenge - the numerous undeveloped President's Youth Choice Initiative projects being a case in point.
The maladies in the local government projects were of several types. Project designs were poorly drawn up leading inevitably to poor work and local government stakeholders were not allowed an input in several cases. Supervision of projects was glancing or non-existent. Unauthorised amendments were made to projects and there were inexplicable variations. Corrective measures incurring more expense had to be taken very soon following the expiration of the defects liability period. Serious questions were raised about the qualifications of persons undertaking the projects. There also appeared to be no blacklisting and contractors who had done poor work were still able to apply for other projects. Tendering arrangements were not always transparent and there were concerns about collusion between officials and those who submitted tenders.
If the government is serious about curtailing these problems it won't succeed by speaking sternly to the officials in the various tiers of local government. It will only occur if a new crop of officials is installed at all levels of local government with the determination to follow procedures and their stewardship of public funds is tracked by transparency in the bid process, consultation with all the stakeholder and full release of information to them and meticulous supervision.