The same people who cry that they can’t pay property tax or don’t have money, will be “jumping around” or spending if it’s announced Carnival 2022 will be held, or if Divali Nagar is on, says Independent Senator Hazel Thompson-Ahye.
Speaking in yesterday’s Senate debate on the 2022 Budget, she said her friends in other Caribbean islands had no problems with property tax in their areas.
Thompson-Ahye said there will never be a good time to start the property tax, which should be fair and equitable.
“So the day of reckoning is here,” she said.
She said the tax had been a political football kicked around by successive governments over years.
Thompson-Ahye added that she knew of a government official whose property tax was less than hers and the situation needed urgent attention.
“I’m watching and I’m waiting,” she said.
She also noted there’s been an escalation of verbal warfare from the streets, social media and platforms. She warned that people must ensure this doesn’t cause disrespect for leaders, since it would be ironic if this desecrates the very institutions that are under pressure.
Thompson-Ahye said children’s education was also suffering in the pandemic with lack of access to Internet or devices and she anxiously awaits a return to school of all children.
She urged continued encouragement towards herd immunity and appealed to parents to do what they must in their child’s best interest.
She said while the Education Ministry got the biggest Budget allocation, it leaves much to be desired regarding the standard of literacy in T&T.
Thompson-Ahye also lauded the late Peter Telfer as a gift to T&T’s education system.
She said T&T people are loving and talented but: “Some are more equal than others and get a bigger piece of the pie and also want to break the pie dish so no one else could get.”
She said conversations were needed on race, creed, class and a new understanding was needed on what it is to live in T&T.
Thompson–Ahye said the Finance Minister has gotten more kisses than kicks for his budget and had been beaming. But she said accounting was necessary also.
She lauded traffic improvements in the East/West corridor and noted the new Public Utilities Minister seemed unafraid to tackle problems in WASA and T&TEC and he encourages workers to apologise for issues affecting the public.
She said she was happily surprised last Sunday, after an outage in her area, to hear a loudspeaker and a voice apologising for the outage.
But she said she couldn’t say the same with TSTT and Bmobile, which had not served people well.
