Municipal Councils want more powers on local issues

Municipal councils want to share power with the members of Parliament, it was revealed during a special meeting held between the MPs and the representatives of Muharraq Municipality at Parliament House here in Gudaibiya yesterday.  

The councils are of the view that all powers are concentrated on the MPs and the parliamentarians have assumed even the role of the Municipal councils. 

The councils want their control over the schools, gardens and roads. They ask even for new legislation, if that is necessary to empower them. This was the first such meeting and many more meetings are expected in the coming months. It has been decided to form a joint committee to look into all these issues.

Speaking to DT News,  MP Jamal Bu Hassan, who was also part of the meeting, said that the MPs were going to give full support to the Municipal Councils so that they could be able to solve the problems of their people.

“They understand that MPs have taken all their authority,” says Buhassan. “We will also try to clear all their misunderstandings.”

He said that it was also a fact that they have more authority only because they have more responsibilities. He said that they were looking forward to open more corporations and more assets to support them. He said that they were looking toward the government to give the councils more support in order to help the Bahraini citizens.  MP Jamal Dawood said that it was an important meeting between two important bodies. The purpose of the meeting was to develop strong cooperation between Parliament and the councils. In the wake of the meeting more cooperation is expected in future and more meetings will be held to follow up the minutes of the meeting.

He said that the proposed committee would analyse all the factors related to this issue. It would review how both the bodies could support each other and move towards more cooperation and what legislation was required in this regard.

Muharraq Municipal Council Chairman Shaikh Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Snan told DT News that they were feeling stronger after the meeting. He said that they were quite hopeful from the outcome of the meeting.

He said that they had a passion for the service of the people and that was not possible without powers. “We ask the MPs and the government to strengthen us with more powers - for our projects and the people,” he says. “We just want to make everything ok with our people and for that matter we need more cooperation from the MPs as well as the government,” says Shaikh Snan.

Photo Caption: Jamal Dawood, Jamal Bu Hassan and Shaikh Mohammed