PESHAWAR, Oct 28: Imposition of composition tax on shops and residential apartments in the Cantonment area has hit the people hard, as majority of them could not afford to pay the amount, sources in the Cantonment Board told Dawn on Monday.

“The shopkeepers and house-owners have been asked by the Cantonment Board officials to deposit composition tax at a rate of Rs650 per foot for shop and Rs300 per foot for house, which most of the people cannot afford,” a Cantonment Board official said.

He said some of the people had deposited the tax and an amount of Rs7 million had been collected in this head.

However, he maintained that majority of the stakeholders had been resisting the composition tax because of their inability to arrange the money.

Authorities had launched an anti-encroachment drive in the first week of July to widen roads and repair faulty telephone, electricity and gas pipeline network. As a result of the campaign, 4,000 shopkeepers in the Cantonment area had to surrender four feet each of their shops which they had illegally occupied.

Now the shopkeepers are required to pay composition tax on terraces built on their shops.

“I have got a small house above my shop on the Tipu Sultan Road in the Cantonment area, for which the authorities have demanded Rs12,000 as composition tax on its terrace. The house consists of just one room and one bathroom,” said a shopkeeper.

He added that he had got two terraces one each on the shop and house, for which Rs20,000 is to be paid as composition tax.

The shopkeepers argue that they cooperated with the authorities for the widening of the roads was concerned but there was no logic to impose tax on the terraces, because these terraces do not come in the purview of encroachment.

The shopkeepers, who are reluctant to pay composition tax, argued that the Cantonment Board officials had been receiving millions of rupees annually as temporary ground rent (TGR), as the shopkeepers had paid Rs8 million under this head till June 2002.

At the beginning of the anti-encroachment drive, the authorities had   promised that 35 cabin-owners would be compensated but now they said, they could only make alternate arrangements for only 8-10 cabins-owners.

Similarly, the authorities have demanded Rs700,000 from 10 opticians to unseal their shops which had been closed by erecting a wall in front of their shops during the drive.

The shopkeepers alleged that they were being harassed by the Cantonment Board officials every now and then and they would resist this unjust attitude of the authorities. They asked the Governor, Iftikhar Hussain Shah, to intervene and save the shopkeepers from incurring losses.