Dick promises no ‘yes people’ on newly launched KSAMC advisory committee
Published:Thursday | February 27, 2025 | 6:38 AMLivern Barrett/Senior Staff Reporter
Bringing the financial accounts of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) up to date is the first task assigned to a newly appointed committee charged with overseeing the local government body.
The KSAMC’s financial accounts have not been updated since 2016, in breach of the law governing its operations, Kingston Mayor Andrew Swaby acknowledged yesterday.
Further, since 2017, the KSAMC has not appointed a Local Public Accounts Committee (LPAC), an oversight body required under the Local Governance Act of 2016, the mayor disclosed.
Swaby was appointed in March last year, replacing incumbent Deputy Mayor Delroy Williams, who served for more than seven years as mayor, starting in 2016.
The incumbent mayor sidestepped questions about the KSAMC’s long outdated financial records and why no one has been held accountable, saying he should not be the one to explain it.
“The KSAMC has its own challenges. I will not be the one who will tell you what they are because I wasn’t mayor then,” he said during a ceremony to announce the members of the newly formed advisory committee that will provide oversight of the KSAMC’s financial affairs, among other things.
“I am here to correct whatever went wrong. So, I have said to the team that we need to contract somebody to bring it up to date and I’ve said to this team, I would love for this to be their first challenge,” said Swaby, making reference to the advisory committee.
Calls to Williams’ mobile phone yesterday went unanswered.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
The 10-member KSAMC Advisory Committee will be chaired by scholar, pastor and historian, the Reverend Dr Devon Dick, who described its role as similar to the Economic Programme Oversight Committee.
Other members of the committee are vice chairman Cleveland Tomlinson; Dr Barbara Carby; Jonathan Swire; Brando Hayden; Professor Carol Archer; Stefan Wright; Shirley Lee Pryce; Garnett McIntosh Reid; and Ketha Silvera.
“This committee will be courageous, we will be bold, we are fearless and we will speak truth to power. We are not ‘yes’ people. We will give the best advice possible,” Dick insisted.
Swaby called the absence of a LPAC “one of the critical gaps at the KSAMC” that leaves a “void in independent oversight”, but insisted that the advisory committee is not a replacement.
He explained that the failure to establish a LPAC stems from the fact that Kingston and St Andrew has not had a functioning parish development committee (PDC) since 2017.
The PDC falls within the remit of the Social Development Commission and is tasked with selecting members of the LPAC.
“Without a PDC, we lack the necessary nominations from civil society to form the LPAC,” Swaby explained.
He said, however, that leadership is about finding solutions and not excuses, calling the formation of the advisory committee a proactive initiative which ensures that the principles of accountability, transparency and ethical leadership are upheld with the country’s largest municipal corporation.
“We refuse to allow bureaucratic roadblocks to weaken the standard of governance that the people of Kingston and St Andrew deserve. We are not waiting for the system to fix itself, we are leading the way in fixing it,” he said.