The audit of three of the country's municipal authorities, Portmore, St. Catherine and the KSAC ordered by Local Government Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, may yet prove to be small bits of waste paper in an overflowing fetid landfill.
As indicated elsewhere in this publication, the financial records of the island's 13 parish councils are in a mess. They did not deteriorate to this state in the past six months or one year. Many have had no audits for the past three to five years and administrators are only now trying to tidy up the system.
The crux of this problem of course, is, that for many years, the Local Government Ministry was the primary source of political pork, and so there was little interest in having a clean system.
In short, it was the National Solid Waste Management Agency writ large. Fortunately, with the exposé of the rottenness at that agency, the Government has been forced to take steps to begin cleaning up that mess. Clearly, this process will have to be extended throughout the ministry.
This is not Minister Simpson Miller's problem exclusively, though she bears ultimate responsibility. The Jamaica Labour Party should have had as much interest in moving swiftly to see the accounts of the parish councils cleaned up.
They assumed control of all but one of the island's municipalities in 2003. A lot of cronyism and corruption prevailed in the regime that preceded theirs. Unless the new councillors merely wanted to get their cut of the pork, they should have been just as insistent in seeing the accounts brought up-to-date.
So for now, the audit ordered by the minister is but the first few steps in a long journey.
While all of this is taking place in the context of a jockeying for power in the People's National Party, and there will be the inevitable spin doctors at work at levels, Mrs. Simpson Miller must remain focused on the important issues, that is to see to the country having an efficient local government administration operated under a system of integrity and sound management.
