Work will be transparent - Persaud Stabroek News January 12, 2000 Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Reepu Daman Persaud expects the work of the Oversight Committee - which will be supervising the drafting of the revised Constitution - to be open and transparent. A general election by January 17, 2001 is legislatively mandated under a revised constitution. Persaud was responding to a query on Monday from Stabroek News as to whether the work of the Committee would be open to the public. He told Stabroek News too that he expected that the first meeting of the Committee would be convened by the end of the week and that by that time a coordinator of the committee's work would have been named. The identification of a coordinator and of the chairman of the Committee is expected to be the subject of consultations between the People's Progressive Party (PPP) and the People's National Congress (PNC). In the discharge of its functions the committee, according to the legislation which established it, must report to Persaud with whom it has to work closely. It must also submit its written reports to the National Assembly through him. The Committee is required to provide the National Assembly with monthly reports and the first of such reports should have been made by December 31. The seven-member committee, comprising parliamentarians and non-parliamentarians, was named on December 20, but letters informing them of the appointments were only received last week. The members are Moses Nagamootoo and Drs Roger Luncheon and Leslie Ramsammy of the PPP; Vincent Alexander and Haslyn Parris of the PNC and Dr Rupert Roopnaraine and Manzoor Nadir of the Alliance for Guyana and The United Force respectively. Among the first tasks of the Committee is the drawing up, for approval by the National Assembly, of a time-bound programme of activities for the drafting of the revised constitution. Another is the establishment of two task forces with clear terms of reference for addressing the issues of the electoral system and the establishment of a Human and Ethnic Relations Commission. A © page from: Guyana: Land of Six Peoples