Gov­ern­ment’s Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion is us­ing il­le­gal pro­ce­dures to as­sess peo­ple’s prop­er­ties such as use of stamp du­ty and al­so hav­ing as­ses­sors stand­ing out­side prop­er­ties on the curb tak­ing pic­tures to as­sess the prop­er­ty’s fix­tures and facets, UNC MP Barataria San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein said yes­ter­day.

Ho­sein, an at­tor­ney stressed the point dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate of the 2021 Bud­get. He slammed the di­vi­sion’s modus operan­di of do­ing prop­er­ty tax val­u­a­tion. Gov­ern­ment has said the tax will be col­lect­ed this fis­cal year.

Ho­sein not­ed a Sep­tem­ber 4 memo from the act­ing Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion head di­rect­ing ramp­ing- up of ex­er­cis­es to pop­u­late the prop­er­ty rolls. When half of the rolls are pop­u­lat­ed the tax can be col­lect­ed.

But Ho­sein said it was il­le­gal for Val­u­a­tion to use as a short cut, the stamp du­ty on peo­ple’s deeds to as­sess the tax.

“You can’t use stamp du­ty to as­sess prop­er­ty tax. It’s two dif­fer­ent bases. One is de­ter­mined on mar­ket val­ue and the oth­er (tax is as­sessed on an­nu­al rate­able val­ue.”

He said Val­u­a­tion, in us­ing stamp du­ty as­sess­ment was putting val­ues on prop­er­ties with­out peo­ple com­plet­ing val­u­a­tion re­turn forms which is a re­quire­ment un­der the law.

Ho­sein said an­oth­er Au­gust 20 Val­u­a­tion doc­u­ment states con­di­tions for Val­u­a­tion of­fi­cers to go out and take in­for­ma­tion on peo­ple’s prop­er­ties.

But this in­volves of­fi­cers tak­ing pho­tos of peo­ple’s homes from the pave­ment, do­ing GPS co-or­di­nates, as­sess­ing how many toi­lets peo­ple have, how many pools, car­ports, beams, sheds, columns, air con­di­tion­ing units and the dates of the build­ing’s con­struc­tion.

“This is il­le­gal, they have to do the prop­er val­u­a­tion for peo­ple for them to get what is re­quired to pay the tax,” Ho­sein said, ap­peal­ing for Gov­ern­ment to hold its hand on the tax in the harsh eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

He al­so crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s gen­er­al elec­tion “grip­ing” about a UNC plan to use Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) funds to run T&T.

He said Row­ley didn’t know what was go­ing on in his team since the Re­cov­ery Roadmap Phase 2 re­port rec­om­mends us­ing $3 bil­lion from the UTC to fund ex­pen­di­ture for three months.

“And it’s the same UTC…. this is hypocrisy,” he said.

Ques­tion­ing the cost of the changeover to the $100 poly­mer notes, Ho­sein not­ed that $8 bil­lion in old notes had been in cir­cu­la­tion and on­ly $7.5 bil­lion was re­ceived to be ex­changed for poly­mer. He said no one was charged for is­sues with old notes and ques­tioned a PNM elec­tion ad­ver­tise­ment with a pig­gy­bank, in­volv­ing the use of old $100 notes.

Ho­sein slammed al­lo­ca­tion cuts for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice which he said would af­fect ser­vice at a time when 2019 held the record for the most mur­ders.

“They al­so cut $20 mil­lion from TTPS ve­hi­cle re­pair fund­ing but al­lo­cat­ed more to re­pair­ing Pres­i­dent’s House, the PM’s res­i­dence in To­ba­go and oth­er build­ings; they have a TTPS Mo­bile Com­mand Cen­tre with­out ve­hi­cles but some­times the com­e­dy writes it­self be­cause there’s Coast Guard that can’t sail and Air Guard that can’t fly.”

Ho­sein al­so called for Gov­ern­ment to say what will oc­cur when the ex­ten­sion of reg­is­tered Venezue­lans is over in De­cem­ber, “We’re re­cent­ly seen a spike in miss­ing teenagers.

Dis­miss­ing the 2021 Bud­get as te­dious, repet­i­tive and bor­ing, Ho­sein said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter had shift­ed from once say­ing he “did it his way” to “blam­ing COVID -19 and Kam­la.”

Ho­sein said Gov­ern­ment‘s tax on im­port­ed fruit has brought T&T to a sit­u­a­tion where “Ap­ple have more than tax than your Ap­ple I Phone.”

UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath who slammed Gov­ern­ment’s youth and dig­i­tal­iza­tion plans, said it was pre­sent­ed by a geri­atric min­is­ter (Fitzger­ald Hinds) whose poli­cies were as old as he was. Padarath said Gov­ern­ment used the so­cial me­dia Tik­Tok ap­proach to change buzz words and Tik­Tok’s song and dance rou­tine for its façade on oth­er plans.