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| Hon Joseph Parry Premier of Nevis. |
CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (August 9th, 2006) -- An Integrity Bill and another regarding the establishment and functions of parish councils on Nevis are the first two pieces of legislation planned to go before the Nevis Island Assembly by year end or early in 2007.
Premier of Nevis the Hon, Joseph Parry made the disclosure recently during an interview with the Government Information Service.
"We are going to introduce in Parliament an Integrity Bill that has to do with how we conduct ourselves, the do's and don'ts, we will have to declare our assets our liabilities and that will be for all members of Parliament because you need to demonstrate at the end of your term, if you have made money you must be able to account for how you made the money and where the money came from, you must be able to account for that. You must not show that you have made $5million and nobody can tell or see how you have made it.
"Certainly by the end of the year we should have done something about the integrity Bill, if not at the end of this year very early in the New Year because it must govern us during our term," he said adding that there will also be a self imposed code of ethics that would govern the ministers throughout their term in office, "so that the people will be able to judge us at the end of the term in terms of our personal behaviour and our personal conduct our personal integrity."
The other piece of legislation Mr Parry explained, would deal with the parish councils which would have some responsibility at the local level for cultural activities, management of the Community Centres for the development and implementation of educational, recreational and academic activities for the young and old. The Councils would also be charged with the management of recreation, parks and the development of various play fields, village roads.
"That local parish counsel will have as responsibility as well creating training programmes for young people. They will be responsible for the village roads, trenches, sanitation, the state of garbage, those ponds and local streams and so on and of course they will be reporting back to government so that we can know some of the things that are happening that often miss politicians because they get too involved in the central government in that type of work. "
"So that is a very important piece of legislation that we would like to introduce pretty, pretty early and this certainly will devolve authority and would help a long way in ensuring that Nevis becomes once again a very beautiful, very clean, progressive and proactive place," Mr Parry said.
Notwithstanding, Mr Parry noted that the Cabinet had established a legislative agenda which would be implemented in 2007 but for the rest of 2006 "we are going to be opening Parliament in the next few weeks. Then we are going to have the Budget in December and then the legislative agenda would begin to slide into place early in the New Year."
