Geisha Kow­lessar

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­pear to be ob­sessed with stick­ing their noses in peo­ple's kitchens, a place where they clear­ly have no busi­ness.

This was the claim made by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in re­sponse to Deyals­ingh urg­ing the pop­u­la­tion to con­sume less salt as there were un­healthy reper­cus­sions re­gard­ing too much salt in­take.

At the open­ing of Wards 18 and 20 at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope last Fri­day Deyals­ingh said the re­quired salt in­take for an adult was five grammes.

His state­ments came days af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at a me­dia brief­ing, raised con­cerns about the rein­tro­duc­tion of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on sev­er­al ba­sic food items in­clud­ing salt which she de­scribed as one of those es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ents in peo­ple's di­et.The for­mer PM al­so not­ed that salt had be­come im­por­tant as it was a sym­bol of the In­di­an re­volt against British rule.

"When the Con­gress Par­ty en­cour­aged every­one to make salt and de­fy the British; Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi him­self staged the fa­mous 'salt march' and made salt from the In­di­an ocean. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Min­is­ter of Health mis­un­der­stood the sym­bol­ism and chose in­stead to take is­sue with salt in our di­et," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

"What is worse, is that the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing this po­si­tion in or­der to jus­ti­fy the rein­tro­duc­tion of VAT on ba­sic food items that were ze­ro rat­ed dur­ing my ad­min­is­tra­tion. Our ra­tio­nale for do­ing it was to make food for the less for­tu­nate in our so­ci­ety more af­ford­able," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of "squeez­ing every pen­ny from the poor" and try­ing to jus­ti­fy their ac­tions by "preach­ing" about health is­sues.

"If Mr Deyals­ingh and Dr Row­ley are so con­cerned about the health of cit­i­zens that they are tax­ing salt to dis­cour­age its use per­haps they should look at the var­i­ous fast food out­lets–in­clud­ing those do­ing busi­ness in our hos­pi­tals–where every item is a threat to healthy lifestyles," Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.

Re­it­er­at­ing her po­si­tion and that of the UNC that the VAT in­crease was un­fair as it tar­get­ed the poor, the Op­po­si­tion Gov­ern­ment to re­vis­it the list of items sub­ject to a 12.5 per cent in­crease come Feb­ru­ary 1.

"There is still time to do it. Let me make it abun­dant­ly clear that when the PNM launched its elec­tion man­i­festo promis­ing to re­duce VAT to 12.5 per cent it did not give the slight­est hint of pick­ing the pock­ets of the poor. The rein­tro­duc­tion of VAT on hun­dreds of ba­sic food items is a con job," Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.