Mahdia’s township to be gazetted before year-end-Minister Bulkan

GINA, GUYANA, Wednesday, May 3, 2017

The challenges that were faced with the realisation of Mahdia Township are being addressed through a work programme. The work programme projects for these challenges to be overcome and for the mining community to be gazetted as a town in the third quarter of 2017, according to Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan.

Minister Bulkan in a recent interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA), explained that the challenges that were faced with the realisation of Mahdia Township had to do with the demarcation of the constituency boundaries.

“Under the legislation, the number of electors that are required for the election of a constituency representative or councillor, the number of residents in the geographic space of Mahdia poses some challenge to create the constituency,” Minister Bulkan explained.

“This has been the challenge that is being addressed, but the work programme is that those challenges will be surmounted in the third quarter of 2017 to allow for the gazetting of the town,” the minister added.

Also to be gazetted in 2017 are four new Neigbhourhood Democratic Council (NDC) areas, as announced by Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan during the presentation of the year’s Budget.

The four new NDCs area to be created are Kuru Kururu and Yarrowkabra, in Region Four, Baracara, in Region Six, and Aranaputa, in Region Nine. Minister Bulkan said that the outer boundaries for these new NDCs have been demarcated and defined.

He said that work is progressing in varying degrees on the internal boundaries, but the work programme provide for these four areas to be formally named as NDCs during the course of this year. This would allow for those areas to elect their own representatives and their own councils at the next Local Government Elections (LGE).

According to Minister Bulkan, the next LGE would be held in 2018. “President David Granger has said on a number of occasions that as long as he is president that Local Government Elections will be held as and when they are due, and that there would be delays or slippages, so the next Local Government Elections will be held before December 7, 2018,” the Minister said.

Once an LGE is held, the residents of the various municipalities and NDCs vote for their representative councillors on the local councils. The head of those councils are later elected at an internal election by the duly elected councillors.

In 2016 the government created three new towns; Mabaruma in Region One, Bartica in Region Seven and Lethem in Region Nine.

The creation of the new towns and NDCs are part of the administration’s strategy policy and vision of fostering national development via regional and local empowerment.

The new towns for instance, are expected to be the administrative centre of their respective regions, providing key governmental services. They would work in tandem with the duly elected councillors, who the administration continues to support with capacity building training to better delivery on their role of providing the services to the residents that will foster this national development.

Mahdia is a small community in Region Eight. Commerce is centred on the area’s gold and diamond mining operations. The community’s population is just over 400, primarily Indigenous people and coastlanders who migrated to the hinterland to seek employment.

 

By: Macalia Santos