Sascha?Wil­son

Debe house­wife Ri­ta Chanka raised her eye­brows with a wor­ried fa­cial ex­pres­sion when she heard Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day men­tion prop­er­ty tax com­ing in­to ef­fect next year.

"Now self we need two belt to tight­en," she laughed as she, her neigh­bours Bisun­daye Sookraj, 62, Cha­nar­daye Nanan, 74, and her daugh­ter Gee­ta Nanan, 51, looked at the tele­vised pre­sen­ta­tion of the min­is­ter's 2016/2017 Bud­get at Nanan's home at Welling­ton Road.

Cit­i­zens will be taxed three per cent on the val­ue of their prop­er­ty, but the min­is­ter said home own­ers will be ex­empt­ed on the ba­sis of in­abil­i­ty to pay.

"I don't know about that. We will have to wait and see be­cause they say one thing and do some­thing else," Chanka said.

En­dors­ing her view, Gee­ta, who lives abroad with her chil­dren, said her moth­er was a pen­sion­er and lived alone.

"Some­times they say one thing and do some­thing else," she said.

Her moth­er added, "I have arthri­tis, I can't walk so good. The oth­er day I fall down and hurt my two shoul­ders."

They were re­lieved, how­ev­er, when no men­tion was made of in­creas­ing food prices and hap­py when the min­is­ter an­nounced a 25 per cent re­bate for peo­ple whose elec­tric­i­ty bill is $300 or less. The min­is­ter said 120,000 house­holds will ben­e­fit from this ini­tia­tive, which Gov­ern­ment will now work out with T&TEC.

Chanka, who cares for her 40-year-old Down Syn­drome nephew who is bedrid­den, said, "I am one of those peo­ple. My bill is about $200 and some­thing. I think that is a good idea be­cause it have a lot of poor peo­ple in the coun­try."

How­ev­er, she was again scep­ti­cal about whether the ini­tia­tive would re­al­ly be im­ple­ment­ed.

Their friend Yas­min Edoo, who dropped by while the pre­sen­ta­tion was tak­ing place, said she did not even have to hear the Bud­get to know that it was a to­tal dis­con­nect with civ­il so­ci­ety.

"As a cit­i­zen I feel like a stranger. The Gov­ern­ment have a to­tal dis­con­nect with the peo­ple. They have to come down to the ground peo­ple."

When the min­is­ter an­nounced a new Crown Point Air­port ter­mi­nal, Edoo rolled her eyes, say­ing, "That is good, but now is not the time for that. What they need to do is to help the peo­ple and in­crease rev­enue by pump­ing mon­ey in small projects, not large projects."

How­ev­er, Chanka said they need­ed to care­ful­ly re­view what the min­is­ter said be­fore she could say whether they were hap­py or un­hap­py with the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.