LAHORE, July 18: The Road-user Charges are generating less revenue and causing more resentment against the City District Government because a majority of citizens terms the imposition of charges a case of discriminatory double taxation.

The CDG has already started the recovery of charges under the National Logistic Cell supervision at five points — the Lahore-Sheikhupura Road octroi post, two Bund Road spots on both sides of the Saggian Bridge on River Ravi, opposite Wapda Grid Station on Ferozepur Road and near Ordnance Depot on Multan Road.

The charges are proposed to be recovered on six more spots on Burki Road, Hydiara Road, GT Road, Niazi Chowk, Shezan Factory and Sherakot on Bund Road.

The application of the road user charges is discriminatory because the decision to levy the same has been taken by the Lahore District Council comprising Nazims of all the 150 union councils in the city district but these are meant for the use and maintenance of only 32 major roads controlled by the CDG.

Owing to public resistance, the CDG has been able to collect only around Rs250,000 during the last 17 days against an expected Rs5 million in the form of the additional tax imposed by it on motorists besides the Motorvehicle Tax already being collected by the provincial government.

The citizens believe that there is no justification for the recovery of road user charges from the motorvehicle owners because they are already paying motorvehicle tax and driving licence fee to the provincial government. They say that the provincial government distributes the proceeds to the district governments for the maintenance of their roads.

The CDG has decided to levy an additional motorvehicle tax on the use of roads as it had started extortion of the sanitation fee in addition to the property tax which the ex-Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore claimed to collect for meeting the expenditure on sanitation.