GUJRANWALA, Nov 13: At least two dozen excise and taxation officials, including three excise and taxation officers (ETOs), were issued show cause notices for not meeting the target of recovering property tax.

They were also warned that their services could be declared surplus if they failed to look up their performance.

This was stated by Excise Director Sarfraz Ahmad at a meeting of ETOs and excise inspectors in his office here on Wednesday.

He noted with concern that the recovery target for the first quarter of the current fiscal year was fixed at Rs170 million, but only Rs30 million could be recovered during the period.

Taking a serious note of it, he issued show cause notices to three excise and taxation officers and 21 excise inspectors.

The meeting was told that citizens, business community and other professionals were not cooperating with excise officials as they were not satisfied with the new system of collecting property tax on land basis. Instead, they were demanding that collection of property tax system should be changed and the old system be restored to accelerate the pace of recovery.

HANDCUFFED: The banking court judge got handcuffed two defaulters in the court and later sent them to jail here on Wednesday.

Shahzad and Altaf owed Rs7.8 million to the Habib Bank’s Sialkot branch.

The court also issued the warrants of arrest for five other defaulters.

INJURED: A schoolteacher was injured allegedly by three assailants over a money dispute in Kot Inait Khan on Wednesday.

Arash Muhammad went to the village to take back Rs20,000 in cash from the accused, but they locked him in a house and beat him up with clubs.

On a tip off, the Ghakkhar police conducted a raid and recovered him from the house. Later he was taken to the local civil hospital in critical condition.

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