APROPOS the news item ‘Two-day nationwide protest by traders begins today’ (Oct 29). It is funny. The traders are demanding that the government should have confidence in them and cooperate with them. The traders should know that trust and love are not something that can be demanded. They have to be earned.

The factual situation is that traders pay no taxes of any kind to the government, whether federal, provincial or local. They do not file any sales, purchase or expense and income statements with any government agency.

They happily pay the taxman under the table! Lock them all up. Take over their shops. Turn it over to the unemployed man to run. These are the shopkeepers and the petit bourgeois Napoleon and the Bolsheviks despised. They deserve no quarter.

Syed Ahmed

Hong Kong

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2019