The Ministry of Local Government has identified some provisions in the Local Government Act that needs to be changed.
Director of Local Government Bindula Devi highlighted some of these provisions while addressing the public consultations on municipal council elections and retirement age of municipal council officers at the Suva Civic Center yesterday.
“We will be drafting regulations for the elections from discussions that will generate from consultations that we will have,” Ms Devi said.
“We will review the fees and allowances of the counsellors and mayors. We believe that we have a legislation that is quite old, and the fees and allowances are really very nominal.
“So, in this day and age, we might have to modify some of them. We obviously intend to standardise the fees and allowances based on the sizes of the councils. We have currently based the allowances on the sizes of the council, that’s small, medium, and large.
“So perhaps that’s the method we might use.”
She said they would review the suggested provisions of the Local Government Act to be in accordance with the new framework of the Local Government’s operations.
“The question really is where to from here in the next three to five years?
“One of the suggestions that we have is to amend the terms of the councillors from three years to four years. Currently the legislation says three years, so we would like to increase it by one year but we are happy to discuss this with you.
“The criteria or the qualification of persons who wish to contest elections. This is something we need your contributions on so that we have a thorough set of criteria, and that we comply with those criteria.”
On who can vote in the municipal council elections, Ms Devi said they wanted to reduce the age of voters from 21 to 18.
“Then we’ll have a bit of discussion in terms of whether we want to have the wards, constituencies, and what are some of the terminology’s that needs changing? What are some of the eligibility of the candidates that we want to be included in the Local Government Act or the regulations.”
She said the submissions received from the ratepayers would be helpful in terms of what they want to see amended.
