Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pres­i­dent, An­cel Ro­get says if Gov­ern­ment im­pos­es prop­er­ty tax­es on cit­i­zens at the height of a pan­dem­ic, it could be the prover­bial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Ro­get ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of im­pos­ing “Tal­iban-like” mea­sures against cit­i­zens.

Ro­get ac­cused Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters of liv­ing high off the perks of their of­fices while ig­nor­ing the plight of or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

He said the av­er­age man is strug­gling to sur­vive dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when many have lost their jobs, food prices are in­creas­ing and the cost of liv­ing has gone up.

“They have all kinds of al­lowances, dif­fer­ent al­lowances in their month­ly in­come, some of them don’t even pur­chase gaso­line and fu­el at the pumps, tax-free and du­ty-free and they are al­lowed to pur­chase ve­hi­cles while you the or­di­nary man, who gave them the job to make life eas­i­er for you, to im­prove the qual­i­ty and stan­dard of liv­ing, they are im­pos­ing hard­ship on you.”

He said the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency was done with­out cause and with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax loom­ing, cit­i­zens can­not protest.

Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to make up for the fi­nan­cial short­fall of their mis­man­age­ment of the econ­o­my and the en­er­gy sec­tor.

He vowed to host a sep­a­rate press con­fer­ence to speak on the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) de­ba­cle.

Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment was “test­ing the wa­ters” by try­ing to gauge how the pop­u­la­tion will re­act to prop­er­ty tax.

He said if the pub­lic re­mains qui­et, hell will be their fate. He said those who rent will not be ex­empt from the im­pact of prop­er­ty tax, as the cost is bound to be passed on from their land­lords.

“They are com­ing to squeeze blood out of stone... how much more are we pre­pared to ac­cept be­fore we stand up and say, enough is enough? This prop­er­ty tax may well be the prover­bial straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Ro­get said the prop­er­ty tax should be im­ple­ment­ed on a phased ap­proach- with con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to ex­empt­ing res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty own­ers.

“We have al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed that there should be a phased ap­proach with this prop­er­ty tax arrange­ment, we should not put pres­sure on res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty that is not earn­ing any rev­enue, my prop­er­ty doesn’t earn any rev­enue...there should be a phased ap­proach as to how we phase this in with in­dus­tri­al and so on, those that earn rev­enue and then com­mer­cial, you do not put all of our cit­i­zens, the ma­jor­i­ty of our cit­i­zens in­to this net at the same time,” he said.

The labour leader al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to de­fer the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax at this time, say­ing, “There couldn’t be a more dif­fi­cult time and it is rel­a­tive to every­body and in any sit­u­a­tion where cost is be­ing passed on and ev­i­dent­ly it will land on the backs and shoul­ders of cit­i­zens be­cause of that, we are say­ing it is the wrong time for its im­ple­men­ta­tion, let’s de­fer this and let the coun­try be able to catch it­self and breathe again.”