Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) Josi­ah Austin has re­ject­ed claims that Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies have re­ceived dis­burse­ments from prop­er­ty tax rev­enue.

Austin was re­spond­ing to com­ments made in the Sen­ate by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, fol­low­ing a ques­tion posed by Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi.

The Min­is­ter said that as of May 2025, $135.5 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax had been col­lect­ed and dis­trib­uted to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, with the largest pay­ment of $23.2 mil­lion go­ing to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Austin dis­put­ed this, say­ing the fig­ures re­flect­ed to­tal col­lec­tions re­port­ed in the past, not ac­tu­al trans­fers to Cor­po­ra­tions.

“To date, the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion has not re­ceived any dis­burse­ment of prop­er­ty tax rev­enue,” Austin said. “No such funds have been re­mit­ted to our Cor­po­ra­tion for ser­vice de­liv­ery or de­vel­op­ment projects.”

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of abol­ish­ing the prop­er­ty tax regime with­out pre­sent­ing a cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies.

Ac­cord­ing to him, in­de­ci­sion on the is­sue has left cit­i­zens who paid their tax­es sub­si­dis­ing those who did not, while com­mu­ni­ties re­main un­cer­tain if the funds col­lect­ed will ever be used for their ben­e­fit.

Austin said the TPRC con­tin­ues to face in­creas­ing fi­nan­cial strain as it tries to re­pair roads, clear drains, and main­tain pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties with­out the re­sources it was promised.

He de­scribed prop­er­ty tax as a fair and eq­ui­table mech­a­nism when trans­par­ent­ly man­aged, since it al­lows di­rect rein­vest­ment of funds in­to com­mu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that with­out prop­er gov­er­nance and guar­an­teed dis­tri­b­u­tion, the tax fails to achieve its pur­pose.

The chair­man called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly dis­burse all prop­er­ty tax funds al­ready col­lect­ed to the Cor­po­ra­tions from whose ju­ris­dic­tions they were sourced.

“As Chair­man, I re­main com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for the rights and in­ter­ests of our burgess­es, and for a sys­tem of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment that is fi­nan­cial­ly em­pow­ered, trans­par­ent, and ac­count­able,” Austin said.