Poor civil society attendance at poverty reduction talks

from Stabroek

The poverty reduction consultations on governance and security and on health at two separate venues in the city on Monday were poorly attended and saw very little participation by civil society.

The donor community and the government dominated the gatherings.

At the scheduled start of the governance meeting at the Umana Yana there were 16 representatives of the donor community; four senior government functionaries: Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon, Minister of Foreign Trade and Inter-national Cooperation Henry Jeffrey, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Kellawan Lall and Presidential Advisor on Governance, Gail Teixeira; four members of the media and one civil society participant from the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG).

During the meeting, one opposition political activist and a businessman arrived and towards the end of the consultation the Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manickchand showed up. There were two facilitators.

Stabroek News also visited the consultation on health held at the nearby Red House. There, too, there were more government functionaries and members of the donor community and the media.

The two consultations on governance and security and on health were part of the discussions on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) 'Working to Reduce Poverty.' A third consultation was held at the same time at the Buddy's International Hotel and reports from the donors at that meeting were that it was also "very sparsely attended."

One donor voiced the opinion that the meetings should have been cancelled and greater effort made to involve more civil society participants at a later date.

In his presentation to the consultation on 'Governance and Security,' Dr Luncheon reflected on the achievements and the challenges of the first part of the PRSP which dealt mainly with public administration, financial administration, corporate governance and political administration.

According to the base document for the consultation, significant progress was achieved in governance and security with the government embarking on a number of programmes including strengthening fiduciary oversight, justice reform, a citizens security project and local government reform. Progress was also highlighted in dealing with border controversies and security.

Discretionary powers

On limiting the use of discretionary powers the document noted that provision was being made to develop specific recommendations in respect of limiting the use of discretionary powers such as rights of ministers and the President to override and give exemptions to laws and the case for removing some of them; clarifying independent powers of commissioners that are not subject to higher authorities; transparency of processes for taking agency decisions to higher authority; rationalization of functions where there are overlapping jurisdictions between agencies and ministers to clarify lines of accountability such as utility regulation, licensing and competition.

Other provisions in progress for limiting the use of discretionary powers include strengthening the capacity of agency boards to develop a code of principles, standards and good practices for the conduct of board members and a programme to train board members in good governance practice; develop and promulgate proper principles for setting fees and charges; strengthening the rights of review and appeal of the discretionary decisions of agencies and making them transparent; reviewing and rationalizing rights to impose penalties; and reviewing rights to grant exemptions from laws administered by the agencies.

On disclosure of public assets, it was noted that provision was in train for the Office of the Auditor General to be nominated as the liaison agency for the Integrity Commission; and provision was also in progress for the reform of the Integrity Commission.

The Integrity Commission has not functioned for sometime now.

Even though the Citizens Security Programme (CSP) being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank was down for discussion there was no representative from the Guyana Police Force or the disciplined services. (Miranda La Rose)