REFERENCE is made to the Demerara Waves report of September 21, 2018 titled, “PPP promises no new taxes to Georgetown; gov’t yet to decide on paid parking, but increased property rates likely”.

This is derived and fashioned from statements made by the PPP/C councillor, Bisham Kuppen, at City Hall, especially when he said, “We know more revenues can come in there other than putting additional burdens…so we are not in a hurry to burden this country anymore, so we have to look very carefully at what they are preparing before we can agree to any concerns.”

The middle of the caption that refers to the government’s current position on the parking lot controversy is geared to give solidity, to an entirely false understanding of a government that intends to foist unnecessary and unreasonable financial burdens on the citizens of Georgetown. In both instances, this is not so; since, first, as in the case of the process of re-evaluation, government has secured the services of the Canadian entity, Municipal Property Assessment Corporation to aid the government’s valuation office in a nation-wide inventory and valuation of properties.

Minister of Communities, Ronald Bulkan has assured that the results from such an exercise will be given to the individual local authority. The latter will be the final determinant of the level of taxes to be applied. Secondly, it has always been a position by the government that the parking meter taxes entailed an undue burden on citizens, thus referring the matter to a current cabinet sub-committee for further assessment.

In every respect, Kuppen’s statement is misleading; for the issue of increased taxes relates to a principled and absolutely necessary position on the part of the government, to correct not only a very flawed practice on the part of many citizens who are still paying the paltry sum for taxes on domestic dwellings that proprietors have converted to commercial properties, but which would have deprived municipalities and neighbourhood democratic councils (NDCs) of much needed revenue to improve social amenities in their communities. The correction of such a glaring anomaly is an important responsibility which is expected of every central government.

In fact, this shocking and deliberate act has also coincided with an absence of any re-evaluation of properties throughout Guyana for more than two decades; non-payment of both commercial and domestic taxes in the Georgetown Municipality that have accrued to billions in outstanding revenues owed to City Hall, and a similar state of affairs in other municipalities. This is unheard of in any of the sister CARICOM states, or in any other capital city, where municipalities are mandated to provide vital services.

It immediately begs the question, which must be answered by councillor Kuppen, as to where he believes the revenues for the M&CC to offer the much needed services to residents and the city in general, should originate? He is certainly aware that the lion’s share of the billions owed comes from the business and commerce sector, and that there is a traditional obduracy to pay their debts.

Therefore, it does not need a visitor from another galaxy to understand the reasons as to the abysmal, physical environmental state of the many communities throughout the 10 Administrative Regions, especially those that were deliberately neglected by the former administration because of their perceived political alignment. Bare coffers, as a result of grave insufficiency of finances, would have further exacerbated already abysmal community conditions.

It is not the policy of this government to interfere in the daily management of the local authorities, as there is now a Local Government Commission (LGC) that is constitutionally mandated to administer this major pivot of our democracy. However, this does not mean that central government has abdicated its responsibility with regards to such a seminal issue, as the undue absence of re-evaluation of properties that is impacting on every local authority’s revenue stream. Again, the PPP/C councillor must be reminded that at the end of the current valuation and inventory exercise now in progress, it is the respective local authority and not central government that will determine what level of taxation that their locales will pay.