HYDERABAD: Farmers of last year’s rain-hit areas demand tax refund
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, June 29: The Sindh Abadgar Board has asked the provincial chief minister to direct the DCOs and EDO (revenue) of the districts, which were declared calamity-hit areas in last year’s heavy rains, to ensure that the growers of these areas receive tax refund by July 15.
In a statement issued here on Friday, SAB president Abdul Majeed Nizamani recalled that 2006’s monsoon rains had wreaked havoc in Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Umerkot, Badin, Thatta, Hyderabad, Tando Allahyar, Tando Mohammad Khan, Matiari, Nawabshah, causing massive losses to the farmers.
He said Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim had directed the Board of Revenue to exempt the growers of calamity-affected areas from payment of land tax, water charges, local cess and drainage cess.
On July 4, 2207, he said, the revenue department had issued a notification, exempting the growers from the payment of the taxes to the extent of 25 per cent to 100 per cent. Since the notification was issued very late, the recovery of taxes had already been made for the Kharif season in many a calamity-affected Dehs, he said.The farmers’ leader said that the recovered taxes should be immediately refunded, but expressed the fear that due to traditional attitude of the bureaucracy, the growers of the calamity-effected areas may be deprived of refund.
To ensure the payment of refund to the growers, the SAB president demanded of the chief minister to direct the DCOs and EDOs (revenue) of the above districts to refund the recovered amount to the growers latest by July 15. The payment should be made through bearer cheques, he proposed.
He also demanded that the growers of the affected areas be exempted from payment of bank loans and Takawi for the year 2006 and be provided interest-free loans to help them in rehabilitation.
LAND SALE: The Sindh Taraqi-pasand Party has condemned the sale of 11,640 acres of land on Super Highway off Scheme 33, Karachi, to the Defence Housing Authority ‘at a throwaway rate of 1.164 billion against the prevailing market rate of Rs58.2 billion.’
In a statement on Friday, acting STP chairman Dr Abdul Hameed Memon claimed that even the Sindh revenue minister had conceded on the floor of Sindh Assembly that DHA had occupied 250 acres of Sindh's land.
He demanded that the decision of the land sale be cancelled and other pieces of lands which had been illegally occupied by different organisation be taken over by the government of Sindh.
Meanwhile, Sindh National Party activists here on Friday staged a protest demonstration against demolition of the party office in a Karachi village.
