Understanding the Local Govt System (Part 2)

Dear Editor,
The collection of rates and taxes to support funding of essential developmental activities and services is mandatory and necessary, and our people must be willing to pay their rates and taxes.
However, there are serious complaints that some administrative staff members at the NDCs refuse to collect the rates and taxes. The situation evidences a deliberate effort to frustrate the Local Authorities’ councillors and slow up development in the communities.
Importantly, in addition to the provision of basic amenities, there is a direct relationship between the speed at which communities move forward and the conditions and levels of service that actually exist there.
Councils are expected to address issues such as garbage and refuge collection; maintain streets, drainage and irrigation canals; ensure acceptable health services; playfields; and generally keep the surroundings clean and attractive. Community-minded citizens are always helpful, and give their support to keep the communities safe and clean.
For Councils to be able to do their work, however, it is compulsory and complementary that all rates and taxes be paid in a timely manner. The NDCs must function in the interest of the people, hence the NDC staff must be flexible in rationing work during lunch hours, to facilitate rate payers — who are working people and might find time only during that period — to make payments.
Further, councillors have complained about the attitude of some overseers and rate collectors, who are adamant that their job is not to go after the rate-payers, which is a new problem. More serious is the allegation that NDC staff members are asking residents to buy them “a lunch” and leave a “raise” for them. This attitude is unacceptable, and is a deterrent to people visiting the office; hence the need for the appointment of the Local Government Commission now.
A matter of concern for many councils is higher rates and taxes being levied on residents. However, they must consider this is almost impossible, since our citizens have been forced to pay higher rates and taxes in all respects by the State. While collecting billions from citizens, the new VAT approach has become a tremendous burden, since citizens are now paying a higher rate for electricity and water, in addition to the impact on transportation cost and the VAT on education being a real stress for parents.
Another conflicting new position is that the E-Governance Programme of the Government is now using many NDC buildings as hubs in an effort to support the communities and their youths in accessing information and services attributed to government departments. This imposed government project is utilising office space at the NDCs, necessary for the Councils to operate in, to provide the required mandated services to the rate payers.
During the period when these hubs are in operation, it’s difficult to carry out some of the functions of the local authorities because of the steady movement of the users. The local authority is further burdened to bear the electricity cost and additional security to monitor the ingress and egress.
Although these hubs could be beneficial to the community, the manner in which they are managed suggest that the Government is using it with a charged political agenda and with racial partiality, because of the location of these hubs and the ethnic divide that they are serving. As the NDCs and municipalities continues to be starved of finances to carry out the necessary works in the communities, millions of dollars are made available to serve the support bases of the APNU.
Nagamootoo and Ramjattan should wake up from the slumber they find themselves in and represent their support base, at least lobby for a few hubs to be placed in the Indian and Amerindian communities and villages.
We demand the Local Government Commission now!!

Yours faithfully
Neil Kumar