Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana Riding on the Crest of Truth
Last Updated on Friday, 25 November 2022, 12:36 by Denis Chabrol
Mr Nigel Dharamlall
Minister of Local Government Nigel Dharamlall on Friday said government has decided to revert to the 2016 local district boundaries and widen others to ensure greater representation of Guyanese at the March 13, 2023 Local Government Elections.
He said 14 local authorities had been changed by the then A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) administration for the 2018 Local Government Elections but his now governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has decided to revert them and adjust others. “We have decided that for better representation that those areas go back to 2016 constituency boundaries so we believe that at the end of Local Government Elections on March 13 that there is going to be better representation of people and there is going to be more activism on behalf of residents within these areas and government will happily work with all 70 NDC areas as well as the 10 municipal areas across the country,” he said.
With the changes, he said there would be more councillors compared to 2018 when there were 1,192 in 596 constituencies. Emerging out of the 2023 Local Government polls, he said there would be 1,220 councillors in 610 constituencies.
Mr Dharamlall sought to assure that consultations have been held about the changes, in contrast to those that had been done for the 2018 Local Government Elections by the APNU+AFC. “As a matter of fact, I would want to think that there was a deliberate attempt to keep out the public from this process in 2018 because a lot of the changes were done internally through the Guyana Elections Commission and not through the consultative national process,” he said.
He told a news conference that the Region One town of Mabaruma would now include Wauna. He claimed that the then APNU+AFC administration had excluded Wauna because its a stronghold the PPP. “In Region One, there will be no discrimination in terms of who participates in local democracy quite unlike what would have obtained a few years ago especially in the 2018 Local Government Elections,” he said. Across in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), he said government has decided to revert to the 2016 boundaries that had been subsequently collapsed and merged by the coalition administration. He added that Kitty-Providence and Moruca-Phoenix, located in the Lower Pomeroon, would be merged into one Neighbourhood Democratic Council because the population size is very small. Similarly, he said in Region Three, the Toevlugt-Patentia boundary has been extended to Free and Easy to capture a few hundred more residents. The Local Government Minister said that in Region Five (Mahaica-West Berbice), the neighbourhood of Woodlands Park has been extended to include Number 10, Little Biaboo and Big Biaboo. He said government has responded to calls to adjust the size of Number 52-Number 74 neighbourhood in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), would be split into Number 52- Number 63 and Number 64-Number 74.
While the Local Government Minister said no neighbourhood boundary was contracted and the number of seats reduced, he moments later admitted that that was done for the Hauraruni-Yarrowkabra Neighbourhood. “No, we have not contracted any boundaries, neither have we reduced any seats,” he said. Asked to respond to claims by Representative of the List of candidates for the People Development Movement Michael Carrington that the number of seats for the Hauraruni-Yarrowkabra Neighbourhood Council has been reduced from 8 to 6 and the constituencies from 4 to 3 without consultation, Mr Dharamlall explained that the changes were linked to the structure of the areas. “Because the area has to be further regularised, we have decided that in terms of population dynamics that it is better to have many persons grouped within one area so that we can have better representation,” he said. The Minister said that the area to which Mr Carrington has referred is very distant and has a “very limited number of persons” and so a decision has been taken to include it in a larger constituency.
The Local Government Minister alleged that Mr Carrington has not been seen at any of the public engagements that government has held in the two neighbourhoods on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway.