Property evaluation: Another burden being placed on suffering Guyanese

Dear Editor,
The Government of Guyana (GoG), through its Ministry of Communities, is carrying out an axiological survey; or, simply put, an assessment of properties housed in its municipalities. Starting with the New Amsterdam Municipality, GoG hopes to sweep through the rest of Guyana on an upgrade in property evaluation and the concomitant tax regime.
In the ministry’s agenda, most of the laws governing property evaluation in our towns and city are antiquated and direly need an upgrade so as to bring in expensive foreign valuators to add that “authenticity flair” to their tax dealings. They have dressed up this exercise under the Municipal Property Assessment Canada (MPAC), so they can now have that free rein to tax the daylight out of Guyanese.
The story they are giving us is that this valuation upgrade is going to bring in well-deserved revenues hitherto denied the municipalities by the parasitic rich. But is this the real story; is this the situation that would play out when the real taxation begins? I am afraid not! What is going to happen is additional hardships would be put upon the struggling poor when the upgrade sinks in.
What is going to happen is that more and more of the urban poor property owners would have to put their properties up for sale, because they would not have the means to pay up. Is this the new and improved Guyana we are talking about? Is this the good life?
The fact of the matter is you cannot categorically say you are taxing the rich without hurting the poor. The poor are bound to come out losers in any of this arrangement, that’s what these idiots do not understand. Poor people form the majority in any community, that’s a fact of life no one can deny; and this backward, idiotic scheme, wherein a few rich property owners are going to make a government arbitrarily up taxes, the end result is bound to bring harrowing consequences, as it already has. The poor are most of us, and as such we are the ones who would face the brunt of the attack.
This Government is cash-strapped for reasons they have created themselves through those wasteful spending sprees and poor initiatives. They lack a modicum of management skills, and have a further lack in economic drive; this has resulted in all of their plans turning out to be total failures, while the populace wallows in poverty or near poverty. This incompetence stinks to the high heavens!
Whatever this Government does, you just have to cross-reference to the Burnham era, and you see a carbon copy and a replication of failures and hardships.
People are taxed on the ability to pay; however, in Guyana it is quite the opposite, persons are taxed and given additional burdens when they really do not have the means to pay. A tax-fatigued nation such as ours is stretched to the limit. Guyanese are now flat against the ropes, and it is at this very same time that this PNC-led Government is administering more body blows in the new property tax regime. I say: in times like these we need a saviour, in times like these we need the Lord. Heaven help us all here!

Respectfully,
Neil Adams