Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions are ex­pect­ed to be held with­in the next three months— be­tween late No­vem­ber and ear­ly De­cem­ber of this year.

The pro­posed date was giv­en by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day.

"I think the time for lo­cal elec­tions should be around the end of No­vem­ber, ear­ly De­cem­ber. Well, I don't know the date but it should be around No­vem­ber, De­cem­ber..." Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein gave the sug­gest­ed date five days af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Bill where he de­scribed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els at the coun­try's 14 cor­po­ra­tions "as the worst."

The bill, which was laid in the Low­er House, seeks to amend the ex­ist­ing mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion's act and sev­er­al pieces of its cur­rent leg­is­la­tion.

It al­so serves to make de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient.

In­sist­ing that staff at the cor­po­ra­tions have poor work ethics, Ho­sein did not hold back his tongue, as he blamed "man­age­ment is­sues" on the part of CEOs for the on­go­ing prob­lem.

"No mat­ter how much lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form we want...if peo­ple can't do what they are asked to do the re­form would not work. Once the re­form comes in every­body would fall in. Some­body has to be the dri­ving force be­tween the min­istry and cor­po­ra­tions," he had said.

"I didn't come to look for no friends in there. I came to do a job. When my time is up I have to go my way. While I am there I will talk and get the job done in the right way. I will get op­po­si­tion but I am fo­cused on what I have to do."

Ho­sein who served as San Fer­nan­do may­or for three years said on Wednes­day that it was the norm to vis­it a cor­po­ra­tion and see work­ers scrolling through Face­book, en­gaged on their cell­phone or in talk ses­sions with their co-work­ers rather than work­ing.

Oth­er em­ploy­ees, he said, would ei­ther leave work ear­ly or not show up at all and still col­lect a full day's pay.

This, he said, puts the cor­po­ra­tions in a bad light.

The cor­po­ra­tions have 14,000 em­ploy­ees.

Since be­fore In­de­pen­dence, Ho­sein said lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form has been on the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

"Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form will give cor­po­ra­tions the pow­er to man­age their own af­fairs. So they will choose lo­cal con­trac­tors with­in their cor­po­ra­tion and col­lect their own res­i­den­tial tax­es. As of now, con­trac­tors could come from San­gre Grande and work in Pe­nal/Debe. When the re­form comes that can­not hap­pen. The coun­cil will have the say of what projects they want...they would pri­ori­tise which one they want over which one."

Ho­sein said the biggest stum­bling block Gov­ern­ment would face with the re­form would be im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Once the bill goes in­to ef­fect, Ho­sein said there would be changes with the way cor­po­ra­tions op­er­ate and do busi­ness.

Ques­tioned about cor­po­ra­tions op­er­at­ing with lit­tle or no fund­ing to un­der­take projects, Ho­sein said this has al­ways been an is­sue with lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

"Not to­day, not the last three years, not six years...Fund­ing is not avail­able like how it used to be."

In the 2018/2019 Bud­get, Ho­sein's min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $1.52 bil­lion.

While some cor­po­ra­tions called on Ho­sein to ex­plain why monies have not been forth­com­ing, he said his min­istry just acts as a con­duit be­tween the cor­po­ra­tions and Fi­nance Min­istry.

"So when re­quests for fund­ing comes to the min­istry we send it to Fi­nance and Fi­nance would send the cheques back to us and we would fil­ter it down to the 14 cor­po­ra­tions."

In the last five weeks, Ho­sein said he had read with in­ter­est in the Sun­day Guardian news­pa­per com­plaints of burgess­es in Ch­agua­nas, San­gre Grande, Princes Town and Ari­ma cor­po­ra­tions about lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion by some coun­cil­lors.

Equal­ly dis­turb­ing, Ho­sein said, many burgess­es could not iden­ti­fy their coun­cil­lors which showed they were not con­nect­ing with peo­ple on the ground.

Ho­sein said it was dis­ap­point­ing for a burgess not to know their coun­cil­lor.

At all times, Ho­sein said, chair­men, coun­cil­lors and may­ors should be eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

"When a man com­plains about a drain you don't have to get it done one time. But you need to talk and lis­ten. Patrick Man­ning used to tell me, God gave every hu­man be­ing two ears and a mouth for one rea­son. It is not what you say but how you say it."

Ho­sein said it was im­prop­er and un­pro­fes­sion­al for coun­cil­lors to quar­rel with burgess­es when they raise an is­sue af­fect­ing them.

"You can't do that (quar­rel). You have to talk to the peo­ple and ex­plain to them the sit­u­a­tion. You can't be wrong and strong."