Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment should post­pone im­pend­ing util­i­ty rate hikes un­til cit­i­zens’ eco­nom­ic plight is ad­dressed and re­duce fu­el prices to pre-Bud­get prices, says UNC MP Van­dana Mo­hit, who’s slammed Gov­ern­ment for im­ple­ment­ing rate hikes and prop­er­ty tax all at once.

Mo­hit spoke about the sit­u­a­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to out­line its short, medi­um and long-term strate­gies to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­duce the es­ca­lat­ing and un­con­trol­lable in­crease in the price of es­sen­tial goods and ser­vices. She called on Gov­ern­ment to take nec­es­sary ur­gent ac­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly rem­e­dy the neg­a­tive ef­fects on those liv­ing be­low the pover­ty line.

Mo­hit said the pub­lic was call­ing - via the mo­tion- for Gov­ern­ment to out­line short-term strate­gies, whether by re­vers­ing the fu­el hike to pre-Bud­get fig­ures, or post­pon­ing the im­pend­ing util­i­ty rate in­crease un­til cit­i­zens’ eco­nom­ic plight is ad­dressed, low­er­ing or re­mov­ing VAT on all food­stuff and low­er­ing im­port du­ties and VAT on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and med­ical sup­plies.

“The de­ci­sion to file this mo­tion was dri­ven by ex­treme suf­fer­ing, frus­tra­tion, and hope­less­ness...,” Mo­hit said.

“At this giv­en mo­ment, can any­one of us here hon­est­ly be­lieve we are hap­py in this coun­try when sin­gle moth­ers can­not pur­chase ba­by for­mu­la be­cause of sky­rock­et­ing prices?

“Most chil­dren are at­tend­ing school with­out prop­er nu­tri­tion­al sup­port or school sup­plies; when pen­sion­ers can­not par­take of a nu­tri­tion­al­ly sound meal, when fam­i­lies are con­stant­ly fac­ing threats of evic­tion due to their in­abil­i­ty to meet rent pay­ments, when the old and in­firm can­not pur­chase much need­ed med­ical sup­plies nor con­sume req­ui­site meals.”

She added, “An el­der­ly woman who was cry­ing and shak­ing in my of­fice asked me, ‘Gyal, how ah go make when the cur­rent bill go up ‘

“Res­i­dents, house­holds and fam­i­lies are al­ready over­bur­dened with in­creased cost of liv­ing, there­fore, elec­tric­i­ty rate in­crease will on­ly bring greater hard­ship to an al­ready crip­pled so­ci­ety.”

Mo­hit said Gov­ern­ment mea­sures had left many cit­i­zens in a bind but was still seek­ing to im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax from those who had worked hard to build their homes.

“This Gov­ern­ment, which didn’t help at all, is now de­mand­ing of your prop­er­ty tax - the au­dac­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment de­mand­ing in­come from your as­set!” she said.

“Prop­er­ty tax would on­ly serve to fur­ther desta­bilise the econ­o­my and place ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es in the cost of liv­ing on al­ready de­pressed cir­cum­stances.

“This Gov­ern­ment want you to be ex­posed to el­e­ments, rain must wet yuh or sun must bun yuh! Then they will sit back and ad­vise you to ride a bi­cy­cle, use a coal pot and eat mac­a­roni pie less of­ten. This regime even at­tacks what’s con­sid­ered a sta­ple in our Sun­day lunch!”

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, be­gin­ning his re­ply, said noth­ing Mo­hit said could be sup­port­ed by facts and fig­ures.

“And she knows that. She was read­ing slav­ish­ly, and it was writ­ten by some­one filled with hate, spite and bit­ter­ness - not a T&T pa­tri­ot!” Gon­za­les said, adding the T&T Mo­hit spoke of “isn’t one we know.”

Gon­za­les said T&T, like oth­er coun­tries, is faced with many chal­lenges, many “be­yond us” fol­low­ing the pan­dem­ic’s en­try and Ukraine/Rus­sia war.

He said MPs know of the pain and suf­fer­ing of their con­stituents, but Gov­ern­ment has a record of pro­tect­ing peo­ple and has a $5 bil­lion so­cial safe­ty net. He said Gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ed cit­i­zens in the most dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances when oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries couldn’t do this.