At the end of July, Cordel Hyde, the Minister of Natural Resources, appeared as a guest on Channel 7's Uncut show and issue of stamp duties assessments came up.
Here's an excerpt of their conversation on that topic:
Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"You have a stamps commissioner Miss Fairweather that nothing to play with, she is the one who signs off finally on whether your stamp duty will be what you say you paid for the land."
Jules Vasquez, Host, Uncut
"But who has priority, because the lands valuer in the department is the one who approves the value that you may put. But I understand that Miss Noreen, a significant scores of files are backed up on her desk, because she does not agree with what the lands valuer has approved."
Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"What happened is that the previous commissioner was in the business of also attaching stamp duty values which he should not have been doing and Noreen and the former commissioner had a clash and she basically said I'm not going to touch those, you can't bring those to me and so we've worked out an agreement with her where the present commissioner who is also a valuer by training."
Jules Vasquez, Host, Uncut
"Which is a conflict of interest, Minister."
Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"I wouldn't disagree, but I would say that in this particular case its helpful, because he is able to go through those files and look critically at it and I think Miss Noreen trust his competence and trust his judgement and so she is more willing to look at those and signed off on those. At least that's been the process that we've been working on."
"The stamps commissioner now has her own team of valuers, so she no longer has to rely on the ministry to value these properties."
Jules Vasquez, Host, Uncut
"So who takes precedence? because the chief valuer.... what's happening is that the chief valuers approve value is being disapprove by the commissioner of stamp duty."
Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"The commissioner of stamp duties is the person who has the final say. She is the lynch pin there."
Another episode of Uncut will air tonight after our newscast, so be sure to stay tuned in.
