| KINGSTON, June 30 (JIS): |
| Minister
of Local Government, Community Development and Sport, Portia Simpson
Miller has said that within the operations of the Local Authorities,
implementation of the local government reform process had begun to
yield some success, such as improvement in the collection of property
taxes. She said local authorities had begun to take steps to expand their revenue base, through increased user fees and more realistic local charges, and that these had yielded good results. Mrs. Simpson Miller was making her contribution to the 2004/05 Sectoral Debate in the House yesterday (June 29). The Minister pointed out that there had been improvement in the approval process for building and development projects in several Authorities, and that there was increased co-operation across party lines within many Parish Councils as well as greater openness and involvement of citizens in some Councils. The Ministry, she said, would continue to consolidate this process by strengthening the process towards management reform within the Councils to enable greater accountability and better provision of services to the public; and increasing the pressure for the preparation of Parish Development Plans to become the platform for local and national development planning. Mrs. Simpson Miller said the Local Authorities had built capacity and started the re-discovery of important values in community leadership and the spirit of volunteerism. “We have brought together political representatives, technical personnel, and civil society representatives for dialogue with communities and, as a consequence, have demonstrated that much can be done in partnership with the communities,” she said. “Our processes and approaches to local governance now represent models for states within the Caribbean and the wider commonwealth,” the Minister added. She informed that Mayors, Deputy Mayors and Councillors had participated in numerous international conferences, forums and seminars on Local Government issues, gaining insight and important lessons for strengthening their Councils’ operations. In April 2004, the Ministry hosted the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), which sponsored the Caribbean Symposium on ‘Local Democracy and Good Governance’. Caribbean Ministers attending this Symposium agreed to form a Caribbean Forum of Ministers responsible for Decentralization, Local Government, Community Development and Citizens Participation. She noted that Jamaican Local Government practitioners had been elected to serve on several international local government institutions, and to be part of international observer teams. |
