THE claim of the political opposition that Local Government Minister Nigel Dharamlall cannot demarcate boundaries of local area authorities is untrue, and goes against a similar action taken by Ronald Bulkan when he was Communities Minister under the APNU+AFC, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said today.

The VP maintained that Minister Dharamlall legally has the power to set boundaries of the local area authorities which include neighbourhood democratic councils (NDCs), towns and cities, contrary to what was claimed by APNU+AFC’s Roysdale Forde during a recent programme.

Noting that former Minister Bulkan did a terrible job when he changed the boundaries, Dr Jagdeo said that the recent action by the PPP/C government corrects those mistakes. More specifically, he said where constituencies were reduced from nine to eight in one area, they were restored to nine in an area.

He said government also extended some areas so that most people who were not part of an NDC area were brought in to one. Added to that, the VP said that in Berbice where there was a collection of 25 villages in one NDC, those villages were split across two NDCs.

In a statement on Friday, GECOM said: “the Chairman pointed out that those changes made to the boundaries of the local authority areas, and any changes to electoral divisions within those Local Authority Areas, are within the legal authority of the Minister.

“She emphasized however, that if the Minister sought to form or change the configuration of constituencies within those areas, he would have usurped the power granted to the Commission to combine and sub-divide electoral divisions to form constituencies. If such were the case, the Minister would have acted outside of his legal remit.”