‘Cool, cool Mandeville’ has long been regarded as the neatest and most

attractive town in Jamaica. Travel books and tourist brochures still refer

to its green parks and British-like order and charm. But anyone driving

through its town centre nowadays during rush hour sees merely a chaotic

traffic jam of impatient drivers and careless pedestrians with street

vendors spilling into the streets. The bus park is a loud unsightly mess as

aggressive ‘ductors try to push every passing person into their bus, while

idle loiterers molest passing females with impunity. The market was once famous throughout Jamaica for its cheerfully bucolic atmosphere. According to Barbara Gloudon, a visit to the Mandeville market was like an enjoyable Sunday outing. But it is now slovenly, unpleasant and a known haven for all sorts of illegal activities.

When it rains, as it often does, and water fills the numerous potholes and floods large areas of the road, things seem even uglier. In quieter moments on sunny days there are glimpses of the town’s past enchantments. But for the most part Mandeville increasingly seems just another disorderly and

indisciplined Jamaican town slowly drifting into anarchy.

The Manchester Parish Council is determined to change this and return

Mandeville to its former glory and make it once again an example to the

country. But even more, it aims to make the Manchester PC a

model for the nation in terms of efficiency, accountability and citizen

participation.

The Manchester PC is the first in the country to try and implement the

public discussion recommendations on local government reform made in this year’s budget presentation by the Minister of Local Government. Ian Reid, the current Secretary/Manager of the Manchester PC, was a member of the Local Government Reform Unit and is very enthusiastic about what can be accomplished.

“We dealt with five main areas – legal reform, institutional upgrading,

financial upgrading, community participation and information technology. All

the consultants involved were highly qualified professionals with wide

experience both here and abroad. I used to work as a policy analyst in New

York City and the work done in the unit was of the same or of a higher

quality than what I saw being done abroad.”

Mr. Reid, who has a Masters in public policy and is currently working on his

Doctorate, says the Manchester PC is determined to put into action the

local government reform program.

“We need to decentralize government in Jamaica and make the process more participatory. Reform must come from the bottom up as well as from the top down. People must get involved at a local level and take responsibility for the development of their community. And Manchester is the best place to start. We Manchesterians have always boasted, and with good reason, that we are the most disciplined and forward thinking parish part of the country. If anyone can make the proposed reforms work it is us, and there is no reason why we can not.

The Manchester PC are concentrating on three main areas. Our first goal is

to set up a properly structured organization. We have thus established

priority posts – directors of administration, finance, planning and

information technology - and staffed them with qualified professionals. An

inadequate structure was one of the main failings of the old parish councils

and this has to be remedied before anything else.

Secondly, the mayor is adamant about widening the process of decision

making, and allowing the citizens to participate in governance. One way of

doing this is to open committees to the public and allowing them to vote on

programs. We are also putting in place mechanisms to facilitate the

providing of information to the public and to establish measurement

indicators. We have already set up a series of town hall meetings to which

everyone is invited. The first was our public budget meeting and it went

very well.

Our third goal is to provide the highest quality of service properly. Of

course this is what all our efforts are ultimately geared at. And we are

already having success. In the area of poor relief for instance, we propose

to cut the cost of delivery and increased the quality and the amount of

services provided. We used to give $60 per week and now we give $120 on the same budget. This has been done by increasing our efficiency. Too much is spent on administration. We are now spending 70 cents of every dollar to deliver 30 cents of service. Our goal is to reach the international

standards of spending 30 cents and delivering 70 cents.

We are currently concentrating on enforcing the acts currently on the books. Perhaps later on we can start looking at changing and adding to these, but the first step is the implement those in place properly. Some of these have not been appropriately enforced for years. For instance last year we collected $24,000 in fees from barbers and hair dressers. This year the figure was $227,000.

We are working with the Jamaica constabulary force on trying something

new in our transport centre by combining the idea of the Japanese police box with a zero tolerance policy. This basically means setting up a mini police station manned 24-7 in front of the bus park and keeping the entire area neat and orderly. Local businesses are funding it, so it will cost tax

payers nothing. It will become operational early in the new year. Commuters, especially female ones, will be glad to have the forces of law immediately available. By having police right on the spot at all times we hope to eliminate petty theft and personal harassment. We want to make life less stressful for commuters. Ordinary citizens needing to get to school or work should not have to run a daily gauntlet of touts and pick pockets.

We want people once again to be proud to live in Mandeville and for those

who visit here to always have a pleasant experience.”

It would be nice to see the Manchester PC achieve what it has set out to do and prove that the local government reform program can work in practice as well as theory. For if every parish council in the nation set similarly high standards and made real efforts to achieve them, the daily quality of life in Jamaica would dramatically increase.

Jamaicans are forever complaining that politicians do not listen to the people. The Manchester PC is giving the residents of the parish a wonderful chance to help govern themselves. It is now up to Manchesterians to partake fully of this opportunity. After all, God helps those who help themselves.