RONALD LEE: In its cost of living motion, the Workers’ Party suggested a tiered approach to pricing water, so that households that use more water pay higher fees.
This tiered structure will see households taxed by up to 60 percent if they fall into the highest tier of water users.
Sure, this will hit the pockets of people like towkays and black-and-white colonial bungalow residents who own huge swimming pools and fish ponds.
But it will also affect bigger households, where family members have to stay together because of the unaffordability or unavailability of housing.
It is pretty much common sense that the more people there are in a household, the more consumption of basic necessities like water and electricity.
People who would benefit from the WP’s tiered water pricing scheme are DINKS – double income, no kids families.
But such families already have access to housing, and are shown by research to have proportionately higher income compared to other larger households.
People reject the government’s raising of water taxes by 18 percent because it comes at a very bad time, and the reasons given are paper-thin.
Yet, the WP must rethink its proposal because its tiered scheme might make things even worse for lower income and middle income households.
