Feb 12 , 2016
News
Opp picks apart govt’s ‘authoritarian’ ruling style
By Ijaz KakakhelISLAMABAD: Opposition parties in the upper house of parliament on Thursday claimed that important decisions were taken outside parliament, and demanded the government abandon its “anti-people economic policies”, especially regular hike in taxes.
Criticising it on this count, the opposition senators said the present government is of the rich, for the rich and by the rich, while poor have no room in it. They were debating the additional financial burden of Rs 101 billion on the gas consumers and not passing on to the masses the benefit of reduction in petroleum prices in the international market. They criticised the government over the recently imposed new taxes of Rs 40 billion. It called for a stop to indirect taxation, which directly impacts the poor.
The opposition said that since the formation of the incumbent government not a single programme has been initiated for the welfare of the poor people, rather they have been subjected to more taxation and foreign debt. PTI’s Senator Numan Wazir asserted that 58 percent of the population of the country was living below the poverty line. He claimed that economic experts, who made the budget of the country, could not even differentiate between billion and trillion. PML’s Kamil Ali Agha said the PML-N government was going totally against its manifesto.
He claimed that the finance minister imposes his decisions while totally neglecting the poor. Agha said the PML-N lacks principles and was running the government like a king does. Participating in the debate, PPP’s Saeed Ghani said the government could not take action against the corrupt and inefficient officials of FBR and was instead burdening the poor. He said it was already charging Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) to the gas consumers and now wants to collected Rs 101 billion more for the installation of an LNG plant. Calling the government tyrannical, MQM’s Senator Tahir Mashhadi said it did not care for the poor and works for the benefit of the corporate sector only.
Speaking on the occasion, Farhatullah Babar said not transferring the benefit of reduced oil prices to the people, levy of Rs 40 billion taxes recently and the decision to tax the poor an additional Rs 110 billion for building a pipeline network demonstrated the PML-N government’s lopsided economic priorities as well as its personalised style of governance. He said the government is taxing the poor through indirect and double taxation, protecting the rich unabashedly and was taking personalised decisions all while disregarding the institutional mechanisms of Council of Common Interest, parliament and the regulatory bodies mandated by the law.
Babar said people have already been paying for the pipelines in the form of GIDC and charging them again another Rs 110 billion for the same purpose was nothing but double taxation, which was not only illegal and unconstitutional but also callous. He said the present government never taxed the rich, “as was evident from the mid 90s tax returns of the chief executive” that were recently flaunted in Senate by the opposition leader. He said that the personalised style of taking unilateral decisions without consultation was reflected by the fact that even before the OGRA summary landed on the PM’s desk proposing Rs 11 per litre cut, the PM had unilaterally announced a meagre Rs 5 per litre cut in petroleum prices without consulting anyone.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk