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ROWLEY ON THE ATTACK"I want to tell my Government tonight that the tax I pay, I marking meh money. And it is to buy medicine for the hospital, chalk for the schools and to pay old age pension..."
Ria Taitt Political Editor
Sunday, December 20th 2009
'nothing to gain': Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley makes notes during the sitting of Parliament at the Red House, Port of Spain, on Friday. -Photo: ROBERTO CODALLO As he registered his strong objection to the property tax on Friday night in the House of Representatives, in the Red House, Port of Spain, Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley demanded that the revenues collected from this tax be spent responsibly. And he cited as a prime example of a disastrous investment any involvement or purchase of cash-strapped, indebted Air Jamaica.
Rowley thundered: ’It would be a kind of madness to allow people, out of delusions of grandeur, or the intention to build empires with more wings, to go and pick up troublesome Air Jamaica and saddle it on the people of Trinidad and Tobago’.
Rowley’s attack on such a venture came two days after Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, anxiously seeking a partner for the airline, held a meeting with acting Prime Minister Dr Lenny Saith at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, to discuss a proposal to acquire Air Jamaica.
Said Rowley: ’I want to tell my Government tonight that the tax I pay, I marking meh money. And it is to buy medicine for the hospital, chalk for the schools and to pay old age pension. None of it is to go into any such venture (to purchase Air Jamaica),’ he declared.
’Mr Speaker... we had BWIA, we offered shares in it for $1 to our Caribbean neighbours. None of them took it up. We carried BWIA to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for many years... until eventually we... had to allow BWIA to go under. It cost us over $ 1 billion to allow that to happen... And we did all that to get out of the saddle of an airline that we couldn’t bear. Today we are being invited to pick up somebody else’s problem. Well I am putting the people of this country on notice that we have nothing to gain... by... picking up somebody else’s legacy,’ Rowley asserted.
http://www.theworldpress.com/press/w...ss/express.htm
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