Dear Editor,

This letter is in response to article written by H G Helps in the Sunday Observer of May 12, 2019, entitled ‘Local gov’t and what it doesn’t stand for’.

What does local government stand for? That’s a good question.

Helps attacked the few men and women the people voted for to represent them in council.

What is local government, Helps? Local government is the people; the people who are not allowed to have a say in their daily lives because of the system of central government and someone like you. (By the way, I am an ardent reader of your articles.)

Sir, if you had read our constitution and the Rex Nettleford report, (ordered by former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller — the best government report ever) you would have instead attacked central government and Parliament and not councillors.

I ask of you, why is the only gaming lottery done by the private sector and not by local government, as done in other countries? Why is it that the local authorities cannot develop the large amounts of land owned by the councils?

Editor, you must read and recommend, not just criticise.

Autonomy is the word. We must entrench the people (local government) in the constitution. With local government entrenched as it should, the Kingston & St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) would get at least 5,000 new people enrolled with the National Housing Trust (NHT). People such as hairdressers, gardeners, handcart operators, barbers, bartenders, and many others of similar low income, can afford to pay into the NHT.

With local government given a numbers’ licence (not lotto), just three or four numbers a day, it would allow the councils to fix all the roads, gullies, drains, and river banks. It would enable at least four gabion basket factories that would help the islands of the Caribbean with climate change.

Let us recall, Helps, that local government has produced Marcus Garvey and Sir Alexander Bustamante, Portia Simpson Miller and Desmond McKenzie, and scores of others who have made an impact in some way.

Editor Helps, give the Government a paper of recommendations to work with. Find out the reasons they are scared of local government being embedded in the constitution.

I do hope that after reading the constitution in its totality and travelling the world you would realise the role of the people’s ministry (local government).

Councillor Lee Clarke, OD, JP

Former Mayor of KSAMC

leetris51@yahoo.com