KARACHI, Dec 23: The federal government has agreed, in principle, to the Karachi city government’s suggestion of levying between one and two per cent tax on those using the Karachi Port and 50 paisa a litre on the sale of petrol/ diesel under the head of road user charges, the City Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, said here on Sunday.

The road user charge will be charged to motorists.

At an Eid Milan reception hosted in his honour by Faran Club International, he said the amount to be collected under the heads of the proposed new taxes, called “sea dues” and “road user charges,” would help the city government in bringing about improvement in the infrastructure in the city, and hoped that businessmen and industrialists would extend their cooperation to the civic agency.

He deplored that Karachi having a population of 15 million contributed 73 per cent to the national exchequer, but it had not only been deprived of a considerable amount of revenue which it used to generate under the head of octroi duty but even the motor vehicle tax, meant for repair and maintenance of roads, was not retained by the provincial government, let alone giving it to the city’s civic agencies.

Similarly, the city had provided entire infrastructure for those using the Karachi Port, yet the Karachiites were not being benefited from it, he said adding that a noticeable change in overall conditions in the city could be brought about if the traders of the country extended their full cooperation to him.

Talking about educational matters, he said he would always oppose the idea of giving admissions on self-finance basis not to the educational institutions of Karachi alone but to those in the entire country because this amounted to murder of merit.

In this context, he told the audience that the city government had given all admissions to first-year classes on merit, discarding the trend of giving admission on self-finance basis.

Opposing the decision of denationalizing educational institutions, he said this will spell disaster for our educational system.

Vowing to protect the rights of the people, Mr Khan reiterated that he would never allow the murder of merit.

Those who spoke at the reception were, among others, the Faran Club’s founder and patron-in-chief, Abdur Rahman Chhapra, President Shaikh Ghulam Ahmed, S. M. Muneer, S. H. Hashmi, Ghulam Ahmed Ismail and Shamsuddin Khalid.