ONE TO ONE WITH ROGER EDWARDS:
He will be running in next year’s election.
A Report for FIBS by Corina Goss (CG) 10/26/04
My guest today is Councillor Roger Edwards (RE) talking about a variety of issues relating to his portfolios. Cllr Roger Edwards, thank you for joining me in the studio today. We are going to do a round up of your portfolios so I thought we would begin by you explaining a bit about what your portfolios are and how it was decided that you would hold those.
RE: When we get elected to Council, we have a whole list of Portfolios that Councillors have to hold between them. And, it is done really by common consent. We go through and find that some people have experience in housing problems over several years, so they take the Housing one and so on. And, we all agree between ourselves exactly what portfolios we are going to hold. I chose to accept the Public Works Department and Immigration. Those were the two biggest portfolios that I hold. They actually do take up quite a bit of time, particularly Immigration. At the moment, we are going through a change of the Immigration Ordinance - looking at the forms that we give out, the way we deal with people coming through the airport, people coming through the seaport and so on. We are looking at the various peculiarities and anomalies that come up over the years, particularly between status and naturalisation and the like is on-going. That takes up quite a lot of time. I am hoping before we finish with this particular Council that we can come up with some fairly practical changes to the Immigration Ordinance. This is made more difficult because we don’t only have the Falkland Islands Immigration Ordinance to comply with but the British Naturalisation Ordinance applies to that. And, that is directly through the Governor. I don’t think the Governor would ever over rule this Council. But, the Governor has rights to give naturalisation to people here in the Islands without consulting Council if he so wished. I don’t believe that would ever happen. There’s lots of anomalies like that. Lots of times we have to sort out the ordinance, hopefully before the end of this Council, sometime about the beginning of winter next year, we hope to have some changes to the present Immigration Ordinance.
Public works, I mentioned, is the second biggest and probably gives rise to, oddly enough, most complaints from people and most praise. People have notices that around Stanley there is lots of bits and pieces that are being done to perk up Stanley. It looks much neater and tidier, I believe. And, I think they should be congratulated on that. Of course, I get complaints when somebody sees a hole being dug. Someone’s looking into it, two men are working and three are leaning on their shovels. Of course, that was the minute they walked by. If they’d gone by a little bit later, the three leaning on their shovels probably would be beavering away and the two previously working would be looking on. This sort of complaint will go on for always.
CG: What sort of authority do you actually have when you receive complaints? What can you do?
RE: You chase up with the director of the various departments, the foreman and so on and you get involved all the way down to find out how true these complaints are. In some cases we find they are valid and you make yourself well known to the director that this should not happen and he will jolly well sort it out. In general, they do. Similar complaints are proven not to be quite as perceived by the person making the complaint so you go through a flash in the pan and have to call back and say I have taken note of what was said but nothing would happen on this occasion. They do actually listen and I think that if Councillors so chase these and departments take notice. I
My departments are Aviation (FIGAS). I volunteered to take that on purely because of my interest in aviation. Again, we get complaints and praise on both of those departments. Oddly enough, we don’t seem to get too many complaints about FIGAS during the winter months. But come the summer, when we have to start moving large numbers of tourists and shearers, that’s when we start to get the complaints. People complain about timing of guests’ arrival. Again, it’s talking about why and people end up generally happier. One of the bigger problems we have is actually monitoring the state of the aircraft. They are very expensive bits of kit. They do have wear and tare and they do from time to time have minor accidents and we have to take them out of service and you have to keep a watching brief on the budgets for those departments.
CG: As a Councillor, do you ever feel disadvantaged because you live in Camp that these issues are kind of Stanley based?
RE: Yes I do, particularly in PWD. In Immigration you can do the paperwork and forms and things of that nature from home. But people ring you up and ask why they haven’t levelled the road opposite Kent Road? Why have they left the drains 4-inches below the surface of the road? Actually, I haven’t been along there for about two months. So you then have to find out exactly what they are talking about. If you lived here in Stanley, you could pop along and see what the guys are doing and get an answer immediately. But that’s the only example. I think most of the things can be done as easily in Camp as they can be done from Stanley.
CG: How often do you try to come into Stanley?
RE: I come into Stanley normally twice a month. The last week of every month, of course, is taken up with formal meetings and General Purposes Committee, Financial Committee, Exco and the like. During the month I normally have other portfolio meetings and the like.
CG: The other portfolio I have you listed for is Energy.
RE: Energy - I assume is a throw-back to when we were looking at alternative energy supplies for Camp. And, that is now almost completed with wind generators and things around and about Camp at various farms and the like. They took it one stage further to include insulation and so on and that covered Stanley as well. And, I am sure people are aware that if they are living in older houses without insulation, there are things available through Government to provide insulation to those houses. So, it’s alternative energies and insulation, re-wiring - all that sort of thing. At the moment, it’s about to be concluded. Energy here comes under PWD, of course.
CG: Privatisation is also something that’s in the public eye at the moment. What about the utilities, though? I know that some time ago there was talk about privatising the power station. Is this still on-going?
RE: Every now and again someone gets a bee in their bonnet about a particular department and I doubt if any department in Government here in the Falkland Islands hasn’t been targeted for privatisation at one time or another. Take FIGAS. There must be at least three reports written as to how FIGAS could be privatised. Some were done just after the Conflict. Many of the Departments have been looked at. I think the Power Station, and providing energy to Stanley - that’s been looked at more times than you can shake a stick at. I haven’t heard of the Water Department being privatised. Certainly, hiring off all the plumbing work and the like has been talked about over many years. In fact, we only have one plumber in the water Department to that and another to look after the boilers. Each department goes through periods of targeting for privatising. Building coffins is another thing. The business is too small. I don’t think a Coffin maker in Stanley would be very rich. We are a very small community and we don’t have that number of people who require coffins. It’s the same with other bits and pieces.. They could be privatised. But how are you going to benefit out of that? Is it going to result in saving tin costs of running that service? Will it still provide the same service. Over the years, the people of the Falklands are going to expect a high standard of service from FIGAS, for example. They have provided a very high standard of service to the Falkland Islands. And, people expect that level of service. By privatising, you would probably get rid of some of that personal service that we have grown to expect. Yes. Privatisation has been talked about quite a lot and forgotten about an awful lot and I am sure, in future, that we will go round and round again.
CG: And, your other portfolio is the FIDF.
RE: I don’t think I pay a sufficient amount of time to FIDF. I do visit Major Biggs on the top of the hill and see what he is doing when spending the amount of money we give him every year in the budget. That’s about it. They do run themselves. I do feel a bit guilty by not spending enough time with them. Again, that department, like all the other departments in times stress on the economy as we have presently with the Illex and so on not coming in the vast numbers they usually do, the departments have to make cutbacks. And, we as the portfolio holders have to argue the case for giving that department that money. But also arguing why they shouldn’t have lots of money with that department head. So you defend them on one end and tell them on the other end why they lots of money is not available and they have to hatch a plot according to their needs. FIDF do a wonderful job. The Governor yesterday was very complementary of FIDF. I don’t think I have met a department or organisation that haven’t been proud of the FIDF here. They certainly get a very good press from the various Commanders British Forces. But they are a well respected organisation and they are a very happy bunch.
CG: In relation to the FIDF, the PSI post is going to be gapped for a year. I guess this is a budget saving measure. What is really going to be the military benefit when the post has been so beneficial?
RE: The post has been beneficial and I must say that the current incumbent, Nick Watson of the Royal Marines has been exemplary. He doesn’t earn it but the post actually costs £170,000.00 a year. And, we did look at various options of perhaps employing someone recently retired from the services, perhaps the Marines. But they then very quickly lose the up to date methods of doing things - tactics and weapons - radio work and so on. So, if we did employ someone retired we could get them a lot cheaper to be paying their salary. But within two or three years they would have lost their effectiveness. So, we do need someone who is current like the present incumbent. He would normally go and be replaced with another person of equal rank. Again, he would be right up to date. And, I think nick himself would admit that serving here with the FIDF is a super job and I know he enjoys it thoroughly but it’s not quite the same as serving in a front-line commando unit where you’ve got to be on top line, top form of every particular aspect in the field. So we thought the compromise would be to save money and to keep this expertise would be to gap it for one year. The person comes here for two years, it’s gaped for a year and then we have another incumbent. I must say that over the last couple of PSIs that have been here, they concentrated an awful lot on the training of various skills at their range, drills and the like, I think that we will hardly notice that we do not have a PSI for a year. I hate to think that we don’t have a PSI for the future. That is not the case because we certainly do. And, it keeps our lads up to date on everything. But in times of budgetary constraint we have to restrict the amount of money you spend on it. In fact, it’s quite an expensive post to have.
CG: Finally, next year is election year. Have you given any thought yet as to whether you will be standing again?
RE: Yes I have. I have enjoyed Council. I’ve had ups and downs like everybody else and I enjoyed the work here and overseas. I know we get a lot of stick about sending Councillors away. I said in the last Legco and was backed up by Cllr. Mike Summers. We actually are in the black for going away, whether it’s monetary support from the European Union or political support from other fields, I honestly do think it’s important to keep our contacts and we would be much worse without it. Yes. I’ve enjoyed being on Council and I will probably be standing again next year. Whether or not I get elected depends on how much my constituents believe in the work I have done.
CG: Thank you very much.
