Hazel Brown, co-or­di­na­tor of the Net­work of NGOs for the ad­vance­ment of women, hopes af­ter the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions that 50 per cent of coun­cil­lors will be women as well as 50 per cent of al­der­men elect­ed un­der the new­ly-im­ple­ment­ed pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.Brown made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day at a news con­fer­ence at the Pro­fes­sion­al Cen­tre, Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain. She said the net­work has been hold­ing skills train­ing ses­sions for women to en­sure that those in­ter­est­ed in be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el were well pre­pared to do so.

Brown al­so said the net­work sup­port­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. All over the world, she said, the sys­tem favours women. When asked if she agreed with the method by which it was be­ing im­ple­ment­ed, Brown said she would have liked to see a more sub­stan­tial num­ber of re­forms, such as al­low­ing coun­cils to col­lect house and build­ing tax­es.She said women from all of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­gions met on Sep­tem­ber 7, at Cap­i­tal Plaza, Port-of-Spain and re-con­vened the Women's Po­lit­i­cal Plat­form.The plat­form, she said, set a tar­get that of the 134 seats for coun­cil­lors, 67 will be women and of the 56 al­der­men, 28 will be women.

Brown said the plat­form al­so called on po­lit­i­cal par­ties to nom­i­nate women in winnable seats as coun­cil­lors and to in­clude four women on their par­ty list for al­der­men for each coun­cil the par­ty con­tests. The group has al­so called for a quo­ta of youth on the list of po­ten­tial al­der­men.The plat­form, which con­sists of a non-par­ti­san col­lec­tive of women in the trans­for­ma­tion of pol­i­tics in T&T, al­so agreed to re­quest an ear­ly meet­ing with new­ly-ap­point­ed Gen­der Min­is­ter Clifton De Coteau and sen­a­tor Razi­ah Ahmed.Brown said in some coun­cils there were no women.