Frett proposes vehicle tax, pay cut for lawmakers

Businessman and former minister of health Alred Frett has started the new year with a call for the territory’s politicians to cut their salaries and allowances to match their levels of productivity, and to impose a tax on persons owning more than one personal vehicle.

“[They should] apply a transportation or vehicle tax to those of us owning more than one personal vehicle, and for using the public streets as our designated parking spaces and car washes. We cannot drive more than one car at a time, and whenever we obstruct or abuse the use of public roads we create risk and obstruction. This may not be popular, but even the violators know it is fair,” Frett said.

“[The politicians should] reduce their own salaries and allowances that are far beyond their productivity. Politics must not be a game of people poaching, and it is unfair for the poor to be unable to feed his children so the rich and powerful could squander his blood, sweat and tears,” added Frett in his first 2017 commentary submitted to BVI News Online.

According to him, the proposals he has put forward will help to ‘ease the pain of the people’.

Frett also accused the politicians of mismanagement, resulting in what he said are the ‘frustrations they seek to pass on to others via repeated increases in fees, fines, National Health Insurance, visas, work permits, and police harassment of the innocent’.

“Of course none of these [frustrations] create solutions; just problems,” added Frett who described 2016 as a ‘terrible year’, and warned that 2017 will be worse if corrective measures are not taken.