Dear Editor,
With reference to your several news items on the Cabinet and Minister Bulkan suspending the parking meter By-laws and the clamping of vehicles, the Central Government is usurping the power of the local government Georgetown City Council (GCC). And in so doing, Central Government has set a precedent to emaciate (render powerless) all locally elected bodies. Powers must be decentralised with the local units having unrestrained powers.
Local bodies should have autonomous powers to exercise control over all local issues, including transportation and parking, the topic of controversy involving the GCC. While I am against the Parking Meter Project, I am equally against Central Government intervening in the affairs of local government. Let the local organs exercise unrestrained powers over local matters with its own policies and regulations. But the local bodies must follow legal procedures and manage the affairs of their organs with integrity and transparency; dictatorship must not be tolerated like what happened in the GCC over the parking meter matter. People are very unhappy with the parking meter project. It should have been suspended given that legal tenets were not followed.
The City Council should have suspended the parking regulations without Central Government’s intervention since implementation of parking meters has been opined (by legal luminaries) to be illegal. The City Council entered into an agreement with the foreign company for parking meters without following the required procedure. The GCC failed to put the parking meter to tendering as required by law. It appears there was corruption in the awarding of the contract. Rights of motorists were violated. The entire city and those shoppers, workers and visitors who patronise the city (using personal vehicles) were/are disrespected. With the city having failed to adhere to legal procedures, and having been given countless opportunities to suspend implementation of the parking meters, as well as to start over the entire process in line with the law, Central Government must have felt it had no other option but to take the extraordinary step of ordering the suspension of the controversial city parking meter programme. The GCC could have avoided this problem of the Central Government defanging it of an essential power over local affairs. In not acting according with the wishes of the city dwellers as well as those who patronise it, the City Council has allowed the Central Government to set a precedent of taking actions curtailing the powers of local governments.
Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram
