Dear Editor,
In reading the Stabroek News of Saturday November 9, in an article titled ‘Executive against tax-free salaries across judiciary,’ I learnt that the Chancellor of the Judiciary is receiving tax- free dollars.
What kind of a society are we living in when poor persons who are working for thirty-five thousand dollars per month (the government’s new minimum wage) that they cannot survive on have to pay VAT, and if they work overtime and the money passes the tax ceiling they have to pay PAYE, while persons in high positions get tax-free pay?
Editor, how is it that the Chancellor (and I am pretty sure that he is working for more money than $35,000 dollars per month and that there are many others like him) benefits from a tax-free salary while poor people who are catching their tail to survive have to pay tax?
This is advantage. This is a clear case of the rich getter richer and the poor getting poorer.
What a double standard we are seeing, where mothers have to leave their children unprotected in order to do two or more jobs so that they can barely survive, and yet we have people in high positions who are allowed to get tax-free dollars, depriving the treasury of money that could be used to give poor women and children a better quality of life.
Lastly, Editor, I want to look at the housing problems in Guyana. The landlords/landladies are charging a lot of money for their houses.
On top of that the persons renting these houses have to pay the water bill, light bill and in some cases maintain the yard, and their rents are raised if the owners have to do needed repairs that they should have done a long time ago before renting.
Landlords are doing this because the government is not putting systems in place to correct this wrong, and when I ask myself the reason the answer I come up with is that it is mainly poor people who have to rent these houses.
The Government of Guyana is selling house lots for low and middle income persons from three hundred thousand to one million dollars. I always laugh out loud when they say that they are putting systems in place so that low income earners could own their own home. What a joke, the money that you are working for is not enough to live on much less pay a mortgage.
Where are we heading to? Could somebody please tell me what they think would happen if the governments of the USA, UK, Canada and the rest of the developed countries ban persons from sending barrels and money to their families and friends in Guyana?
Editor, these are really serious times.
Yours faithfully,
Wintress Morris
Red Thread
