PESHAWAR: The business community on Friday set up a protest camp against the government for sending professional tax notices to traders and warned to announce a shutter down strike in case the relevant department did not withdraw the notices.

The camp was set up at Hashnagri where office-bearers of different bodies of traders shared their views and said that unlike other provinces the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had sent professional tax notices to the traders.

“We are already paying multiple taxes. The government should serve the notices to professional people like doctors, lawyers as the traders are regular taxpayers,” Markazi Tanzeem-i-Tajiran provincial president Malik Meher Ilahi said.

Anjuman-i-Tajiran Cantonment leader Mujeeb ur Rehman, Insaf Tajiran leader Khalid Gul Mohmand, Peshawar Chamber of Small Traders and Small Industries representatives Ihtesham Haleem, Shakeel Ahmed and others also spoke on the occasion.

They said the traders had suffered heavily during the prolonged war against terror, but the government did not compensate them. They said that most of the traders were paying regular taxes but the government was introducing additional taxes forcing them to protest.

The protesters demanded of the provincial government to withdraw the notices of professional tax, or they would announce a shutter down strike soon.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2020