KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

San Juan Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley should have worn a hard hat to the Diego Mar­tin Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex open­ing, say­ing it was a con­struc­tion zone.

Row­ley opened the es­ti­mat­ed $45 mil­lion com­plex on Sat­ur­day that will house the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion or Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion with the pass­ing of leg­is­la­tion lat­er this year.

At an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Ho­sein pre­sent­ed pho­tos which showed scaf­fold­ing, con­tain­ers, portable wash­rooms, con­crete mix­ers and a sign say­ing Con­struc­tion Zone, Over­head Works In Progress.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar opened the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal and Irv­ing Park, Siparia, be­fore they were all com­plet­ed dur­ing her tenure as prime min­is­ter.

“I think Dr Row­ley should have at­tend­ed that open­ing with a hard hat on be­cause some­thing could have fall­en on his head be­cause of over­head work tak­ing place. You would see that parts of the build­ing, the iron works, still need fab­ri­ca­tion,” Ho­sein said.

He found the arrange­ment of First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) fund­ing the con­struc­tion and shar­ing the com­plex for the next 20 years sus­pi­cious. But as this is the case, Ho­sein said oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions should re­quest that FCB fund their build­ing con­struc­tions. 

Ho­sein said Gov­ern­ment’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions cam­paign strat­e­gy of telling peo­ple a vote for the PNM was a vote for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form while vot­ing for the UNC was against it was in­ac­cu­rate.

He said the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Act 2022 was al­ready law and was up Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment.

Ho­sein scru­ti­nised the PNM’s Ten Pil­lars of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form, say­ing it could not build box drains, cov­er pot­holes and clean wa­ter­cours­es over the past eight years. He la­belled it a gim­mick and sham to gath­er sup­port for the Au­gust 14 elec­tions.

Re­gard­ing pil­lar one, Se­cu­ri­ty and Fund­ing, Ho­sein said the PNM wants to use prop­er­ty tax to fund the re­forms when peo­ple suf­fered job loss­es, high food prices, im­pend­ing elec­tric­i­ty rate hikes and COVID-19, while the State spent bil­lions on le­gal briefs.

He said the nar­ra­tive that prop­er­ty tax would fund lo­cal gov­ern­ment was un­true, ex­plain­ing there were four cat­e­gories of Prop­er­ty Tax: agri­cul­tur­al lands, res­i­den­tial lands, in­dus­tri­al lands and com­mer­cial prop­er­ties. He said lo­cal gov­ern­ment would on­ly col­lect res­i­den­tial tax at 3 per cent.

“When you look at the es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue in the yel­low books, the Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mat­ed to col­lect $50 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax for fis­cal 2023. When you do the math, each cor­po­ra­tion will get $3.5 mil­lion from this prop­er­ty tax.”

On the Ex­ec­u­tive Au­thor­i­ty pil­lar, Ho­sein said while Gov­ern­ment pur­ports to give cor­po­ra­tions au­ton­o­my like the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), it was un­true.

He said the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would de­ter­mine the salaries of al­der­men, may­ors, and coun­cil­lors. The min­is­ter will be re­spon­si­ble for ap­prov­ing in­ter­na­tion­al donors, grants, tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, bud­gets, and sums not list­ed in the Act to be spent by the coun­cil, de­ter­min­ing how it spends sur­plus mon­ey and ap­prov­ing au­dits and of­fi­cers to sign cheques.

“How can you say you are giv­ing these lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies all of this au­ton­o­my, yet the Min­ster of Fi­nance has so much con­trol? And this is found in the law. He has all con­trol over these lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, so it is un­true to say lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies will have the same au­ton­o­my as the THA.”

On New Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, he said while Row­ley com­plained that mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions could not do their jobs, but want­ed to give them more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for school re­pairs, so­cial ser­vices and sport­ing pro­grammes.

Ho­sein warns that the PNM was more dan­ger­ous than the al­leged jaguar loose in Pa­lo Seco.