Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Own­ers of un­kept pri­vate lands will have to pay a fee un­der the new Prop­er­ty Tax Act.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi when he gave an up­date on the min­istry’s cut and clean pro­gramme. The ini­tia­tive, launched on Mon­day in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cepep, is aimed at erad­i­cat­ing mos­qui­to breed­ing grounds to fight the dengue out­break in the coun­try.

Al-Rawi, who spoke with re­porters at the San Fer­nan­do Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Build­ing, said there are a lot of or­phaned ar­eas and some bor­dered on pri­vate prop­er­ties which they have to get con­sent to en­ter. How­ev­er, un­der the new law, the State will have the pow­er to en­ter peo­ple’s prop­er­ty, cut at the own­er’s ex­pense and add the cost to their rates and tax­es.

“In the fu­ture with the law, when it is pro­claimed—those sec­tions of the Prop­er­ty Tax Act and the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act—that’s when peo­ple will be charged That law was sus­pend­ed in 2009 and then in 2010 it was com­plete­ly sus­pend­ed when the UNC came in­to ef­fect and we had to restart on the prop­er­ty tax cam­paign.

“So the law where a cor­po­ra­tion can go and do the work and put the charge of the work to the prop­er­ty own­er is not yet the law be­cause it’s not been pro­claimed and we won’t do that un­til we have ironed out the prop­er­ty tax regime which is rolling out right now,” he said.

Al-Rawi said they will al­so be re­mov­ing old tyres and derelict ve­hi­cles.

The pro­gramme will be op­er­at­ing in two cor­po­ra­tions each week for sev­en weeks, start­ing with San Fer­nan­do and Pe­nal/Debe, with 900 work­ers on the field each day.

Not­ing that the pro­gramme is be­ing done at no ad­di­tion­al cost to the tax­pay­ers, he urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to clean their prop­er­ties.

“In the mean­while, the Min­istry of Health is en­gag­ing its vec­tor con­trol pro­gramme and we urge cit­i­zens to re­mem­ber that the Aedes ae­gyp­ti lifes­pan is three weeks. Every three weeks you go­ing to get a brand new pop­u­la­tion of mos­qui­toes. Self-help is what mat­ters on this ba­sis you got to go out and re­move any­thing that can col­lect wa­ter,” Al-Rawi urged.

The pro­gramme will be rolled out in Ch­agua­nas and Diego Mar­tin next week.