Rose­marie Sant

Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors have ex­pressed con­cern that the Prop­er­ty Tax, which will al­so be levied against squat­ters on state land, may open the flood­gates to land grab­bing and an ex­pec­ta­tion by squat­ters that they have a right to own­er­ship be­cause they are pay­ing tax on the land.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment says they do not agree with this.

The con­cerns were raised dur­ing the Com­mit­tee Stage of the Prop­er­ty Tax Act when the Sen­ate went through the leg­is­la­tion clause by clause yes­ter­day.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark ob­served that there are laws reg­u­lat­ing squat­ting in the coun­try and “what Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to do is im­pose a tax on per­sons who might be in two in­stances oc­cu­py­ing land with­out ti­tle.

“On the one hand, peo­ple with Cer­tifi­cate of Com­fort wait­ing to go through the process to reg­u­larise prop­er­ly, that is one cat­e­go­ry and then you have new vis­i­tors on the com­pound and may not have sat­is­fied the le­gal re­quire­ment un­der the law.”

Mark said every­one is aware there are more than 30,000 peo­ple oc­cu­py­ing lands il­le­gal­ly, to which Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­spond­ed: “That’s in one town, more like 300,000.”

Gov­ern­ment ar­gued that if some­one is il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing land but ben­e­fit­ing from ser­vices of the state they should pay the tax, but Mark de­scribed this as a “co­nun­drum, you say I il­le­gal but I have to pay tax­es.”

This, he said, would strength­en the hand of the squat­ter to a right to own­er­ship.

“If I have to pay the tax then make me the le­gal own­er of the prop­er­ty, would that not be a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion?”

But Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ar­gued that all the state is say­ing is that “if you don’t own prop­er­ty but you on it you re­ceiv­ing ser­vices, the fact that you pay tax does not mean you will get le­gal own­er­ship.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards ex­pressed con­cern that “in many in­stances, peo­ple will look at this as a sub­tle en­cour­age­ment to go on a land grab­bing spree.” He said peo­ple may not be “au courant with the nu­ances” of the con­tent of the bill,” and “peo­ple may pay the tax and then think maybe I could grab an­oth­er acre some­where else.”

He sug­gest­ed that there should be some­thing where­by “if you ex­tend the sit­u­a­tion you will be re­moved by the state.

“It is way too open to in­ter­pre­ta­tions and we may be open to set off a chain of events that we find un­ten­able in the fu­ture.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Allyson West as­sured that the state has the “au­thor­i­ty to take ac­tion against peo­ple squat­ting” on state lands. What was re­quired, she said, is to “ac­tion the pow­ers that we have.”

But what of squat­ters on pri­vate lands who are tres­passers?

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dhanayshar Ma­habir pro­posed that the Prop­er­ty Tax should be levied on­ly on per­sons who are oc­cu­py­ing pri­vate lands with the per­mis­sion of the own­er.

Ma­habir said squat­ters on pri­vate land are “tres­pass­ing, they are il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing some­one’s land.”

But Im­bert not­ed that deal­ing with squat­ters on pri­vate lands for elect­ed mem­bers of Par­lia­ment is “not black and white.”

As an MP, Im­bert said he has many com­mu­ni­ties in his con­stituen­cy where per­sons are oc­cu­py­ing pri­vate land and in some cas­es for as much as 50 years, “and I have to pro­vide them with ser­vices be­cause they are my con­stituents, they vot­ed for me. I can’t tell them I don’t recog­nise you as a hu­man be­ing or as a res­i­dent and there­fore I am not go­ing to put the roads, drains and wa­ter sup­ply and elec­tric­i­ty I can’t do that.”

Im­bert said there are many con­stituen­cies where it is an “oblig­a­tion” on the part of the MP to “im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing” of per­sons squat­ting on pri­vate land.

He said he could not agree with Ma­habir that al­though the state may be oblig­ed to up­grade the in­fra­struc­ture and pro­vide ser­vices in terms of garbage col­lec­tion and wa­ter sup­ply, that squat­ters on pri­vate lands should not be taxed.

“I can­not agree with that,” Im­bert said.