Councillor Returns With Apology

A week after walking out of the Southern Municipal Council chamber, Councillor Mohammed Darraj returned yesterday and opened the session with an apology.

Darraj apologised verbally before the council began its agenda, following his withdrawal from the previous session over the handling of council requests and changes to the meeting timetable.

During the earlier session, Darraj said the council’s five-member standing committee had agreed to invite two concerned authorities to discuss the mechanism for handling council requests. He said the Assistant Undersecretary for Council Affairs had held the invitations instead of forwarding them, which he argued delayed the council’s work and matters affecting citizens.

He also objected to a change in the interval between committee meetings and council sessions. Darraj said that since the councils were established in 2002, standing committees had met on Wednesday, followed by the committee session on Thursday and the council session the following Wednesday, creating a gap of about four working days.

Under the new mechanism, seven working days are required, which he said could extend to around nine days when the weekend is included. With councils required to hold 20 sessions during each annual term, Darraj warned that the change could push completion of the programme beyond June.

The two items postponed during the previous session, concerning rising electricity and water bills and damage to water tanks in housing projects, returned to the agenda yesterday. They were discussed in the presence of representatives from the Electricity and Water Authority and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning.