KEVON FELMINE

While cit­i­zens who have paid their prop­er­ty tax will now ex­pect their roads to be paved, their drainage cleared and oth­er ameni­ties in work­ing or­der, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi says mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions will have to pri­ori­tise work based on ur­gency.

Speak­ing to jour­nal­ists at Gulf City Mall, San Fer­nan­do last week af­ter the 2025 Bud­get was read in Par­lia­ment, Al-Rawi said prop­er­ty tax will soon go to the cor­po­ra­tions’ statu­to­ry fund so they can use it for a va­ri­ety of pur­pos­es. He said Gov­ern­ment ide­al­ly wants it to go to­wards de­vel­op­men­tal projects to sup­ple­ment drains, re­tain­ing walls, bridges, foot­paths, fa­cil­i­ty main­te­nance, ceme­ter­ies, and cre­ma­to­ria. For the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (RDLG), es­tab­lish­ing ar­eas of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties is its fo­cus.

Al-Rawi said prop­er­ty own­ers last paid this tax in 2009 and de­spite the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ cries, the tax col­lec­tion grew from ze­ro to $91 mil­lion and count­ing. This, he said, will go to the cor­po­ra­tions this year to ad­dress the work that peo­ple com­plain about.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, you can­not fix a pot­hole with no mon­ey. You can­not fix a drain, pave­ment, and pay for garbage col­lec­tion with­out mon­ey, so we are pro­vid­ing a di­rect link­age be­tween the tax gen­er­at­ed and giv­ing it right back to the cor­po­ra­tion so you can at least and in­cre­men­tal­ly get a bet­ter ser­vice be­cause you can pay for it,” he said.

Re­gard­ing what the cor­po­ra­tions spend that prop­er­ty tax mon­ey on, Al-Rawi said there should be a needs analy­sis and the ex­pen­di­ture should be a triage of is­sues.

“You go in­to an ac­ci­dent and emer­gency, they have to deal with emer­gency as­pects in­side there. The most needy get the great­est at­ten­tion. If dur­ing the course of the year, an en­tire road­way is about to col­lapse for a re­tain­ing wall, you may need to treat that first, oth­er than some­thing which was a lega­cy, but nag­ging and im­por­tant is­sue, which is ten pot­holes along a par­tic­u­lar road,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

While some mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties may pay more prop­er­ty tax than oth­ers, he said, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has to work out a for­mu­la to make the tax al­lo­ca­tions to cor­po­ra­tions eq­ui­table. He said that with $91 mil­lion al­ready col­lect­ed and more tax­es com­ing in, cor­po­ra­tions that pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about a lack of fund­ing will have more mon­ey to spend on de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes.

“Ma­yaro, for in­stance, has very few hous­es and a very large land area, so if you on­ly give them what they gen­er­at­ed, it would be un­fair. There will be a for­mu­la which the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will work out to pro­rate or man­age how much you get be­cause it would be un­fair in some in­stances to de­prive a less dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cor­po­ra­tion of mon­ey, say­ing that you on­ly have ten hous­es so that is all you are get­ting,” he stressed.

Asked if this re­quires tax­pay­ers’ pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing, Al-Rawi said there has to be a con­ver­sa­tion and trans­paren­cy. He said cor­po­ra­tions should let peo­ple know how much work is re­quired, how much mon­ey they have and how they plan to ap­ply it, they see the rea­son they are pay­ing their tax­es.

Min­i­mum wage, 5 per cent

wage of­fer

While there are crit­i­cisms of the pro­posed min­i­mum wage in­creas­es, on­ly for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, Al-Rawi de­fend­ed it. He said the $2 min­i­mum wage in­crease was a ten per cent hike for 10,000 Cepep work­ers, so the ex­tra $500 per month was a ben­e­fi­cial re­al­lo­ca­tion.

And while some trade unions ex­pressed dis­plea­sure at the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s an­nounce­ment of a five per cent wage in­crease of­fer for pub­lic ser­vants, Al-Rawi said it was sim­ply the start­ing of­fer the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer will make to work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Fur­ther­more, he re­called that the 2014 to 2019 pe­ri­od start­ed with four per cent and the Gov­ern­ment has now in­creased this to five per cent.

“There will be a process of ne­go­ti­a­tion in and around that. I have read the pa­pers to­day (Tues­day), some unions are say­ing they are not sat­is­fied, but please re­mem­ber there is a process to this. We have to start at a ne­go­ti­at­ing point. A five per cent in­crease means hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in ex­pens­es an­nu­al­ly, ex­tra, and near­ly $1 bil­lion in back pay.”

Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment knows this is what it can af­ford and there is a process with the CPO. He said if there is no agree­ment, par­ties can go to the In­dus­tri­al Court, as the Na­tion­al Union for Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers and the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion have done.