The National Residential Property Tax (NRPT) introduced by this government is doing a great disservice to the population. It is a tax, which has created an economic distress and revolt in every family home of this country. This is a tax that would impoverish all of us. It is about time the Minister of Finance, Mr Sithanen back-pedalled on it.

No other country in the world has this taxation model. How can someone who has, say 20 ‘perches’ of land in Quatre-Cocos, pay the same amount of tax as someone who has the same size of land at Sodnac or River Walk ? Is this fair and equitable not to say discriminatory ?

What about those pensioners who have contributed a lot to their country and now that they are in their 70s or 80s have to pay Rs 2.5 m tax on their “campements” and “campement sites”. Let us not forget that most of those “campements” are inhabited by old age pensioners, living the last stage of their remaining years in peace, drawing their Rs 2,000 old age pensions. Is it humane and fair to impose such drastic and dictatorial conditions on them?

Foreigners have been given the green light to acquire land and property freely and unconditionally in this country. Our own people and folks have got to bend over backwards to toil even till they reach 65 yrs old (Sithanen’s new law) to find money to pay their taxes. Is there a lesson to be learnt from that?

Sithanen and his government ought to be reminded what happened to prime minister Margaret Thatcher when she introduced the Poll Tax in Britain in the 80’s. The British people invaded the streets, cities and towns and protested against that tax. Eventually Thatcher was booted out of Parliament.

<B>Day light robbery</B>

The National Residential Property Tax (NRPT) stipulates that all owners of land who earn more than Rs 215,000 annually are liable to pay this tax on such land and property as from September 2007. Failure to do that means 3 years imprisonment with a heavy fine and as well as confiscation of their properties.

Even small planters would have to pay taxes on what used to be exempted on the amount of their sugar cane productivity. The population needs to fight tooth and nail against this gross social injustice which is inhumane and illegal. The new tax is regarded as day light robbery by the majority of the population.

This tax is tantamount to extorting money from taxpayers and is therefore not acceptable in this civilized country. This exorbitant tax added to the steep rise in prices of basic and vital goods would make life impossible for even the middle classes. This may lead to social unrest in the face of extreme hardship.

What Sithanen did not tell us is that, if someone has saved enough money in the bank for a rainy day to cater for the future of his family, he would, according to the NRPT, be liable to tax even if his earnings are less than Rs 215,000. In the eyes of decency this is totally wrong.

Under the New Finance Act all commercial banks are accountable to the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) via the Bank of Mauritius (BOM) to divulge information to the MRA on any ordinary individual account of every bank customer no matter how small the amount of savings is. For those who have got Rs 2m and over, the Commercial Bank will additionally forward a return to the BOM for tax purposes. This is an invasion of privacy and breach of trust making all bank custo-mers victims of economic exploi-tation.

The opposition parties should think about the possibility of taking this matter to the Supreme Court to find out about the legality of the proposed tax and whether or not it is anti-constitutional.

Politics within the Mauritian context is based on the queer ideologies of our politicians. What we have noted for sometime now that most of our politicians are devious, money-minded as well as wealth-oriented on the pretext that people and country should come first when it is hardly the case.

<B>Ahmad MACKY</B>