[UPDATED] PM urges voters: Hold councillors accountable

The Prime Minister is calling on citizens to hold their elected government representatives to account after the local government elections on Monday, especially those opposition councillors who complain they have no resources.

He said it was essential for people to participate in the running of their community.

Speaking at the South Diego Martin Community Centre on Thursday, Dr Rowley said government had always acknowledged the shortcomings in the local government system. The planned new system, he said, will see a reliable stream of income coming into the regional corporations.

Asked how corporations would be held accountable for the money given to them, Rowley said,

“As a part of this management rebirth, expansion, and elevation, an integral part of that will be accountability in the system, where authorities for spending money will be clear, auditing and reporting will be an integral part of the operations – and that is how you operate an organisation or a business to ensure money is applied where it is authorised to be.

"This is an integral part of the management upgrade we’re talking about.”

Rowley was asked what would happen when opposition councillors complained about not having enough resources under the new system.

He described an incident in which a southern corporation had complained it could not carry out projects because it had no funds, only to be given approval by the Finance Minister to spend unspent balances, and still refusing to spend the money.

“The question is, do we expect our opponents in the districts the PNM is not in control of to be saying they don’t have any resources? Well, they’re not well known for speaking the truth. ...People coming to the PNM from the UNC are now telling us that what they have been told by the political leadership is not to do anything even if they have the resources, so that the people will complain and they will be able to blame the government, and as they blame the government... (it) will be weakened and they will win the next election...

“So the question is, will they use the resources that will come their way?

"The answer I will give to that, is that it is entirely up to their burgesses if they want to elect people who would behave like that, and elect them again. It is a democratic system, they are free to choose their representatives.

"But if they want people who will make full use of those resources, they would be careful not to elect people who would behave like that.”

Rowley said while there was no mechanism to oust people who are not doing their jobs between elections, people’s participation in the local government process can make a difference.

“If you elect people who are uncaring, incompetent, lazy, not excited by the prospect of working for you, if those are the people you elect, you just have to be sure that if those are their attributes, if that is their record, that you don’t re-elect them.

"Sometimes, by you participating and aggressively demanding service, by participating in the community outreaches like town halls and statutory meetings, you can move some of these people who may have been unproductive. You can move them – and some of them may discover they can do more than they thought they could have done.”

Rowley noted that when people break the law, they can be prosecuted. He said TT doesn’t operate a system of recall at this time, and he would not recommend it.

He urged the population to come out and vote for the PNM, and ensure that the UNC lost its deposit in every district.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert again addressed the issue of collection of property taxes. He reminded the audience that the tax would be calculated based on three per cent of the rental value of their property.

“The Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) uses the valuations done by the valuation division and multiply it by three per cent. There’s a lot of rumour and mauvais langue out there, especially by the Opposition, where they’re trying to fool people into believing that the three per cent is multiplied by the capital price of your property. It is not. What the valuation division has done is put a notional rental value against your property. The norm in TT, for almost two-thirds of all residential properties, the value has been put somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000 a month.”

He said three per cent of that is $90 a month, or $1,080 a year.

“I can state categorically tonight that for over 65 per cent of all properties in TT, residential, will not exceed $1080 per year or about $90-$95 a month. However, about half of them are half of that, so about 25-30 per cent of the population, your tax is going to $40 a month, $480 a year.”

He said the BIR would send a notice to each residential property owner and they will be given time to pay it directly to the corporation.

Rowley also addressed the issue of minimum wage. He said government was looking at adjusting it, and Imbert might address it in September.

“Knowing the needs of people on minimum wage, we are looking to see what the government can afford. There are a lot of people on the government payroll on make-work programmes, and when the minimum wage is increased, because the government is such a large employer of those people, the wage bill will go up automatically.

He said while the increase to $30 being requested by the unions sounded good, it would make goods and services more expensive for workers.

“If inflation is driven by a high minimum wage, who suffers most through inflation? The same poor people earning the same minimum wage. While I would join with you in hoping the Finance Minister could make some adjustment, it certainly would not be as high as labour is saying. But maybe some sort of upward adjustment so you could have more money in your hand.

"It would depend on what government could afford and how it would affect public-sector earnings. Because you don’t want if you increase minimum wage, people start laying off people because the labour is costing too much, or the cost of labour is causing the business to go out of business.”