Education campaign on councillors’ duties coming soon, says McKenzie

WESTERN BUREAU:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT Minister Desmond McKenzie has vowed that an educational campaign will be launched in the next two weeks to help educate Jamaicans on the roles and functions of municipal councillors, as well as to educate councillors on the need to be seen in action by their constituents.

Speaking on Thursday during the installation of the Trelawny Municipal Corporation’s newly elected councillors at the corporation’s building in Falmouth, Trelawny, McKenzie stressed that the average Jamaican citizen needs to know what functions their councillors are expected to carry out.

“After this ceremony is over, the time has come, ‘time come’, for the people to start to see what is happening after today. A number of polls were conducted which indicate that persons in every parish said they don’t know the mayor, and they don’t know the councillor. There are going to be extensive sensitisation programmes with councillors, which will happen in the next two weeks,” said McKenzie.

“The handbook for councillors will be ready shortly, as we are reviving the handbook, and then we’re going to be putting out, in a couple months’ time, a guide for the public to know the work of local government. We’re not only providing information to strengthen the councillors, but we’re going to be providing information so that the country can know the role of local government,” McKenzie added.

The minister’s declaration is reminiscent of the distribution of The Councillor’s Handbook to the Jamaica Library Service in 2011 by the late Shahine Robinson, the then-minister of state in the Ministry of Housing, Environment, Water and Local Government and the new transport and works minister at that time.

SENSITISING THE PUBLIC

During that initiative, Robinson had stated that the publication of The Councillor’s Handbook was an avenue by the Department of Local Government to provide citizens with necessary information to become active participants in local governance and in the development of their communities.

In the meantime, McKenzie urged newly reinstalled Mayor of Falmouth Collen Gager and his fellow Trelawny-based councillors that they should take note of the issues raised by the people who elected them into office, following the recently held local government elections on February 26.

“It makes no sense that we pay lip service to what needs to be done. I will champion the cause for councillors to become more accountable, for councillors to be transparent, and for councillors to be seen and be felt in their respective divisions,” said McKenzie.

“I want to challenge Mayor Gager and the fellow councillors to take note of what the people have been saying. We have been listening as a government. We’re not afraid to say that we have heard the call of the people, and that we are prepared to respond. I promise you, that we will continue to be fair, impartial, in how we manage the affairs of local government,” McKenzie added.

A recent RJR-GLEANER Communications Group-commissioned Don Anderson poll, conducted between February 2 and 7, indicated that 40 per cent of Jamaicans ranked the island’s municipal corporations as poor or very poor managers of the nation’s business at the local level.

Of the top five reasons given in the poll for giving the municipal corporations a failing grade, 60 per cent of responders said their elected councillors were missing in action; 57 per cent said poor road construction; 26 per cent said lack of access to water; 23 per cent said no jobs were being created; and 10 per cent said lack of green spaces.