Montague

Government is moving towards entrenching local government in the Constitution, thus, giving it a bigger slice of the budget in an attempt to give more autonomy to parish councils.

It is aiming to have it fully entrenched by 2009, but the process will start before Christmas. This will give parish councils greater power to administer the local planning and development processes.

"We want a period of consultation [with various stakeholders] before we entrench it. So within a two-year period," Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, Robert Montague told The Gleaner.

Mr. Montague has responsibility for local government matters and is leading the reform process.

On the matter of giving local government more from the budget, he said the final amount is still to be finalised as consultations are still taking place with Cabinet.

"You don't have to march on Jamaica House anymore because local government is now at Jamaica House," he said, speaking to supporters at the Jamaica Labour Party's 64th annual conference at the National Arena on Sunday.

Local government received less than two per cent of the last budget or $7 billion of the $380 billion allocation - a mark up of $700 million over the last fiscal year. But councils have been struggling with the meagre allocation, which they claim has not been enough to carry out basic functions, including road repair and drain cleaning.

Meantime, Montague says the JLP Government is also working to improve property tax compliance, rather than increase it, in order to cater to better garbage collection and street light implementation.

We are going to improve the approval process and have more citizen participation," Montague said.