Camillo is adding more pressure to the poor and vulnerable by increasing customs duties from 5% to 6% in his most recent play for money. This proves again that taxation is the only way they know how to raise funds.
Given the job of Finance Minister by his father, he has said that we “cannot manage the pandemic and the volcano without properly funded institutions.”
The ULP was founded to stand up for the people – now Camillo has handled our economy so badly that they are now running out of money and looking to the poor to pay for it.
The Customs Charge impacts the most basic of goods that come into our country. The food on our table, the clothes on our back and many of the materials that give us shelter are subject to the Customs Charge.
Say a container comes in for a supermarket and they had to pay $100,000 for clearance of containers. That additional 1% of $1,000 dollars will be passed off to you, the consumer.
Mothers and fathers buying the weeks groceries might pay $500 to feed their whole family. At the moment, this might get them 5 bags of shopping. But as we prepare for the food at the supermarket to become more expensive and for it become harder to provide and we may only now get 4 bags. Think of giving up an entire bag of shopping and what you might have to give up.
We are heading into a difficult economic time; even without COVID, nearly 3,000 jobs have been lost and 420 businesses have been forced to close because they haven’t been given the proper support from Ralph and Camillo.
Now they are only making life harder for the unemployed and other vulnerable people, those they claim to represent, by making day-to-day life more expensive. What happened to the ULP? This is the time Ralph and Camillo should be supporting us, but instead they are making life harder!