PM sets two-year deadline for local gov’t reform
Prime Minister Bruce Golding has indicated that his administration plans to conclude the process of local government reform within the next two years.
Speaking last Wednesday night at the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) headquarters on Belmont Road, after winning the local government elections, the prime minister said that his Government was determined to conclude the process within that time.
He said that the party would be looking at various reports on the issue, to bring the salient points together in a single report which would guide decisions on its form and structure.
“We are very clear in terms of our approach to local government. We are committed to a local government system, separate, clearly defined, independent of central government,” he said.
“It is for this reason that in appointing the Cabinet, I didn’t appoint a minister of local government. I took local government into the Prime Minister’s Office, with the intention that, within a limited period of time which we have established to be no more than two years, we are going to complete this process of reform so that the local government system can be put on its own feet, to operate on its own authority,” Golding explained.
He said that his Government felt this way because councillors are not appointed by central government but are elected on their own ballot.
“For them to be waiting on allocations from central government to carry out their work is absolutely wrong,” he said. “What you are really doing is that you are undermining the democratic expression of the people’s will.
“We must know exactly what it is that central government is responsible for, what it is that local government is responsible for and, importantly, that they are given the authority and the resources to discharge those functions,” he said.
“The process of local government reform that we are committed to bringing to conclusion will need to answer all those questions,” he added.
He said that once that is done, there will be no need for any local government division within the Office of the Prime Minister.
Local governments must have access to revenues, but they must also manage these funds in a structured way and strengthen their systems of accountability, he said.
Golding also warned the newly elected councils that they would have no “leisure time” and would have to commence work on concluding the reform process as soon as possible.
“That is absolutely necessary so that people have available to them, a governmental system which will enable them to see parochial problems addressed by their councils,” said Golding. “That is what the parish councils are for, to deal with the things that matter to people where the rubber hits the ground.”