By Balford Henry, News EditorEDWARD SEAGA, the Opposition Leader, yesterday urged newly-elected Jamaica Labour Party Parish Councillors to ensure that the Councils were accountable to the people and that corruption and dishonesty were rooted out of Local Government.
He was speaking to JLP mayors, deputy mayors and councillors, as well as delegates from the various constituencies and the party's leadership, at a retreat at the HEART Academy in Portmore, southwest St. Catherine.
Mr. Seaga said the mayors and their deputies were now on show. "It's a long time since we've had JLP mayors. More than half the voters in Jamaica do not recall a time when there was a JLP mayor in office. You are on show because the electors will be watching to see how you perform."
PERFORMANCE IS KEY
He told them the electors would be looking at their level of performance. "Many of the mayors in the past administration of the Parish Councils were not credited with being good performers. Therefore, you have a chance now to show them what a JLP mayor can do," the JLP Leader said.
"They are looking for you to ensure that your Council is run with full accountability. The Central Government of the PNP has a poor record of accountability. Arising out of that is a massive record of corruption and arising out of that, further, is the Parish Councils following the lead of the Central Government. So you have a chance now to set an entirely different tone, for your Council to be fully accountable, for ensuring that there is no corruption and no dishonesty," Mr. Seaga said.
He urged the mayors to keep in close touch with secretary/ managers of the Parish Councils (Town Clerk in the case of the KSAC), who usually knew what was happening.
EXPECTING TRANSPARENCY
Mr. Seaga warned that the electorate expect transparency in the running of the Councils. "It does not expect that we will have situations like what happened to the street people in Montego Bay and they will have difficulty in getting information. It is expected that whatever you do will be above the table and not under the table and that you will have no problem in making the information available," he said.
Mr. Seaga referred to the controversy in St. James concerning the reported attempt to sell captured lands in the Bogue Industrial Estate, Montego Bay, to persons described as 'PNP activists'.
He congratulated Noel Donaldson, newly-installed Mayor of Montego Bay, for seeking to immediately track down how "this dishonesty was operated and by whom, when and where."
Mr. Seaga said neither the JLP nor the electorate expected promises from the new councillors. "The Labour Party does not expect you, the electorate does not expect you to work wonders. You don't have the funds to do that," he said.
