Private businesses, including schools, across the Malakand division were closed on Tuesday as traders observed a shutter-down strike against the government’s plan to extend the tax net to the Malakand division.

The Malakand division trade union president, Abdur Rahim Khan, had given the strike call over the weekend after a detailed meeting with the all-district trade union leadership at Swat Press Club.

The traders said the government’s proposed move to extend the tax net was unjustified and against the agreement the then government had inked with the state of Swat in 1969.

Malakand division, the divisional headquarters, Swat, Shangla, Chitral, Malakand, Bajaur, Dir Lower, Dir Upper and Buner traders observed the strike and closed their businesses with the exception of medicine stores and eateries.

Rahim, while speaking to Dawn.com sarcastically said the government had planned to “reward” the Malakand division residents with tax imposition for the sacrifices they rendered over the past decade and the natural disasters that continuously impacted people’s lives.

He said they would not allow anyone to take away their legal rights as the government had reverted the special status of provincially administrated tribal area PATA and was trying to impose the taxes, which he said would be “an economic murder” of the already devastated people of the division.

He said the economic activity in the division was extremely low, claiming: “Show us a single factory […] where people work and make money.”

He accused the government of having also killed tourism and peace from the area through a “so-called army operation”.

Shangla trade union president, Muhammad Zada, said they would sacrifice their lives but would not pay a single penny to the government in taxes, claiming that it already collects “60 per cent of taxes in remittances, online businesses, mobile, electricity, internet packages, online shopping, freelancing and several others” means but in return the division’s residents “get nothing”.

He said the government the plan to bring the division under tax net would force the already economically devastated people of the area to “commit suicide”.

Hammad Umar, another trade union leader, said that if the government does not withdraw its proposed plan, there will be extreme consequences, warning that “Islamabad was not that far from the Malakand division.”

He said Swat merged into Pakistan in 1969 under a 100-year agreement that there would be no taxes of any kind, and the government would support and initiate the welfare work in all its districts but the situation was now “different and dangerous”.