RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

With the dead­line for prop­er­ty tax pay­ments ap­proach­ing, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of the South­west­ern Di­vi­sion, Ed­mund Cum­ber­batch, has warned that crim­i­nals are now tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als with­draw­ing large sums of mon­ey from banks to pay the tax.

How­ev­er, in or­der to counter this, Cum­ber­batch said yes­ter­day that po­lice teams have been de­ployed around fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to mon­i­tor those leav­ing with cash as the Sep­tem­ber 30 prop­er­ty tax dead­line looms.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Cum­ber­batch pro­vid­ed de­tails of a re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a 72-year-old Pe­nal pen­sion­er who was robbed of mon­ey she planned to use to pay prop­er­ty tax.

Po­lice said at 10.11 am on Wednes­day, the woman with­drew $10,000 from Re­pub­lic Bank on High Street, Siparia. While wait­ing for trans­port, she en­tered a black pri­vate hire ve­hi­cle. As she at­tempt­ed to put on her seat­belt, the dri­ver as­sist­ed her. She lat­er felt a tug on her hand­bag but on­ly dis­cov­ered the mon­ey was miss­ing when she reached her des­ti­na­tion.

Cum­ber­batch said the po­lice have re­ceived in­tel­li­gence that crim­i­nals are tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als who plan to with­draw mon­ey in the com­ing days to meet the tax dead­line.

“What we have done in this in­stance, we have stepped up our pa­trols, fo­cus­ing on the bank­ing and oth­er mon­ey-lend­ing agen­cies and their en­vi­rons,” Cum­ber­batch said, adding that de­tec­tives in plain clothes and uni­formed of­fi­cers will be ob­serv­ing in­di­vid­u­als loi­ter­ing or ap­pear­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with ac­com­plices.

He not­ed that some of these crimes in­volve Venezue­lan mi­grants and urged the pub­lic to re­main cau­tious.

In the pen­sion­er’s case, po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the scene, in­ter­viewed sev­er­al peo­ple and can­vassed the area for CCTV footage but no use­ful in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived.

Cum­ber­batch said while there have been no re­ports of ac­tive rob­beries, po­lice have tak­en proac­tive mea­sures to safe­guard the pub­lic.

“I have per­son­al­ly asked my of­fi­cers to al­so go in­to the banks and to ob­serve. We have de­tec­tives in plain clothes and al­so uni­formed of­fi­cers. They will be ob­serv­ing sus­pi­cious-look­ing per­sons, those who sit and wait. We are tak­ing in front and ad­dress­ing the sit­u­a­tion.” He not­ed that of­fi­cers have been in­struct­ed to en­ter banks and keep an eye on those loi­ter­ing, not­ing that these ac­tions are part of the broad­er ef­fort to safe­guard cit­i­zens as the prop­er­ty tax dead­line ap­proach­es.

Mean­while, act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Naim Gyan ad­vised cit­i­zens to con­duct thor­ough checks be­fore rent­ing prop­er­ties to mi­grants. Gyan said many mi­grants en­ter T&T il­le­gal­ly with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for land­lords to ver­i­fy their sta­tus. He high­light­ed that some crimes are be­ing com­mit­ted by mi­grants and rec­om­mend­ed that cit­i­zens al­low the po­lice to per­form checks on po­ten­tial ten­ants be­fore fi­nal­is­ing rental agree­ments.

Gyan urged cit­i­zens to avoid rush­ing for quick rental in­come and in­stead ex­er­cise cau­tion when se­lect­ing ten­ants, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in these arrange­ments.

Ear­li­er this week, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al meth­ods for pay­ing prop­er­ty tax.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns about long lines at the nine pay­ment cen­tres and the ab­sence of on­line pay­ment op­tions, Man­ning said the is­sue is be­ing ad­dressed. He added that the Gov­ern­ment is de­vel­op­ing new pay­ment meth­ods, in­clud­ing on­line op­tions, al­low­ing in­di­vid­u­als to pay through their bank branch­es or from their com­put­ers and phones.

Man­ning not­ed that these op­tions are in the process of be­ing rolled out.

How­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly said any new pay­ment op­tions are un­like­ly to be im­ple­ment­ed be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line be­cause the process is a com­pli­cat­ed one.