I note from a news clip I heard that the Inter-American Development Bank is lending us yet another $20million, apparently for, even more, remedial work at the Government Land-fill, aka, the City Dump. I have to ask, why? Surely the PLP’s first act almost within hours of taking the government in 2012 was to slap a new tax on we poor Bahamians – no not that God-forsaken VAT – but another invidious tax called the Environmental Levy (that’s just another fancy name for tax). This, of course, should have been paid into a separate trust account under the control of the Environment Ministry, however Mr. Christie and his partners in questionable practices opted to pay these funds into the Government Consolidated Fund – also known to the PLP as the Government Slush Fund. If the Environmental Levy had been kept separate there would, surely, have been no need for any outside borrowing to take care of the Land-fill; after 5 years many millions of dollars must have been collected. I suppose that this was the only way it could have happened otherwise how could Mr. Christie pay for himself and umpteen members of his cabinet to travel first-class to China every couple of weeks?
Now I must ask Mr. Turnquest to seriously consider separating the Levy monies from the general collected taxation dollars, thereby allowing funds to be available, at the very least, to help educate we Bahamians how to separate and grade our household garbage before collection, something, I understand, Europeans have been doing since the 1970’s.
Only asking
Harry Strachan
February 14, 2018
