NWA officers need not attend council meetings – E.G. Hunter

WESTERN BUREAU:

Despite the insistence by some parish councils that the National Works Agency (NWA) officials be present at monthly meetings, the municipal organisations and the body appear to be on a collision course.

Concerns have been raised by several municipal corporations (MC) groups and their umbrella organisation, the Local Government Authorities of Jamaica (ALGA-J), said the NWA, which has responsibilities for the island’s main roads, were not attending their meetings. As a result timely updates on projects in their municipality were not forthcoming.

“It doesn’t work like that, if a municipality has a particular concern that it thinks falls within the remit of the NWA, with today’s technology of email and WhatsApp, communications between the municipal corporations and the NWA can be done in a very efficient way,” said E.G. Hunter, the agency’s boss.

Nonetheless, Hunter said the NWA is not averse to collaborating with the municipal corporations on matters of mutual interest, even as they have two distinctly different roles.

Hunter was resolute that NWA officers did not have to attend municipal meetings, arguing that, in this age of technology, the municipal bodies could use other more convenient methods to interact with the agency instead of physically attending meetings.

“I have said to a number of councils, [municipal corporations] that if there were a particular issue that you would want the NWA to address, to put it in writing, and we’ll examine it to see if the NWA has a remit for what they are asking us to do,” added Hunter.

With a staff complement of only five persons in each parish, Hunter believes that physically attending meetings was unproductive.

Everald Warmington, the minister with responsibility for works, was dismissive on the matter when asked whether a policy decision was taken for them not to attend.

“Any decision I take, I don’t need to discuss it with anybody apart from the team that I work with. Any policy or management decision I take within the ministry, I don’t have to discuss outside of the remit of my team,” Warmington said.

ALGA-J’s President Winston Maragh, who is also the mayor of May Pen in Clarendon, has admitted to The Gleaner that the corporations have been struggling with the NWA’s non-attendance at meetings, which has been ongoing for approximately three years.

“We are not comfortable with this stance, it set back a lot of things,” said Maragh.

“Apparently, they were instructed by their minister not to come based on the arguments that I am hearing and it’s’ a long-standing quarrel that we have been having with them,” he said.