A su­per­fi­cial name change. These were the words used by two Op­po­si­tion MPs to de­scribe the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed move to el­e­vate the sta­tus of Diego Mar­tin and Siparia to bor­oughs.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day morn­ing, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen sought to ex­plain why she and her col­leagues could not sup­port the change con­tained in the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Es­tab­lish­ment of the Bor­ough of Diego Mar­tin and Siparia) pi­lot­ed by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day.

Ameen ques­tioned the ra­tio­nale used by the Gov­ern­ment to pro­pose the change.

“The ques­tion is, is this an elec­tion gim­mick? It is clear­ly fol­low­ing no log­ic at all,” she said, as she point­ed out that there were no con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers be­fore the pro­pos­al was laid in Par­lia­ment.

She said Tu­na­puna should have been con­sid­ered be­fore the two ar­eas based on the size and pop­u­la­tion served by the Tu­na­puna/ Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, which stretch­es from Blan­chisseuse in the north, Mt Hope in the west and Va­len­cia in the east.

“It has more elec­tors than Siparia and Diego Mar­tin com­bined,” she said.

Ameen point­ed out that the last time an area was el­e­vat­ed was in 1990 when Ch­agua­nas was made a bor­ough. How­ev­er, she not­ed that the change was on­ly done af­ter ex­ten­sive re­search and plan­ning.

Ameen al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for seek­ing to make the change, while ex­ist­ing re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are starved for fund­ing.

“You can­not chas­tise them for their abil­i­ty to work if you do not pro­vide them with re­sources,” she said.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment to ei­ther re­con­sid­er the is­sue and de­vel­op a holis­tic plan or al­low a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment to con­sid­er it.

“The third op­tion is we could al­low this in­com­pe­tent gov­ern­ment to use its ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment to make a su­per­fi­cial name change,” she said.

Ameen’s views were sup­port­ed by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal who de­scribed it as a “cos­met­ic piece­meal in­ter­ven­tion”.

“This does not mean that a pot­hole will be fixed or a box drain built,” Mooni­lal said.

Ameen and Mooni­lal re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the col­lec­tion of prop­er­ty tax would as­sist in fund­ing re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions as they point­ed out that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­mit­ted that there would be a ma­jor short­fall based on pro­jec­tions.

“They have been us­ing every pot­hole they failed to patch as an ex­cuse to bring prop­er­ty tax. They need to stop us­ing that rhetoric. That is an il­lu­sion, a lie and pro­pa­gan­da,” Ameen said.

Ameen al­so ques­tioned whether the change would af­fect ex­ist­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment bound­aries de­vel­oped by the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Al-Rawi stat­ed that it would not af­fect elec­toral bound­aries.

Al-Rawi claimed the move to el­e­vate the two mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties came af­ter the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions for both passed res­o­lu­tions call­ing for the change.

He claimed the Cab­i­net es­tab­lished two sub-com­mit­tees that ex­am­ined the eco­nom­ic in­dices, ge­o­graph­ic de­vel­op­ment and den­si­ty of the ar­eas be­fore propos­ing the change.

“The re­port that came back to the Cab­i­net was that it was pru­dent to pro­ceed with the de­sires of the peo­ple of Siparia and Diego Mar­tin,” Al-Rawi said.

He said the change would al­low for more fund­ing to achieve de­vel­op­ment plans and pro­vide ad­di­tion­al ser­vices to burgess­es.