Garbage tax is salt on citizens' wounds, JI Faisalabad chief warns

Key Points:

Jamaat-e-Islami Faisalabad chief Mian Tahir Ayub condemns the Punjab government’s decision to collect a garbage tax.
He says cleanliness and garbage collection are the basic responsibility of the government and municipal institutions.
He demands the decision be withdrawn at once and warns of strong public resistance if it stands.

FAISALABAD: A new garbage tax rubs salt on citizens’ wounds already sore from inflation and heavy utility bills.

According to the Jamaat-e-Islami handout, Mr Ayub, the party’s newly elected district amir, strongly condemned the provincial government’s decision to collect the tax.

He said the rulers had chosen new taxes over relief for the people, adding to citizens’ difficulties instead of easing them.

Mr Ayub said inflation, heavy electricity and gas bills, petroleum prices and other taxes had already made the common man’s life miserable.

In such conditions, he said, collecting a garbage tax was like rubbing salt on the people’s wounds.

He said cleanliness and garbage collection were the basic responsibility of the government and municipal institutions.

JI accuses govt of ‘picking pockets’ through petroleum levy

Citizens already paid the government through various taxes, he said, yet basic civic facilities were still not available to them.

Streets, neighbourhoods and markets suffered from poor cleanliness arrangements, he said, while the government wanted to pick citizens’ pockets in the name of cleanliness.

Mr Ayub said that if the government lacked the capacity to run cleanliness, it should admit its incompetence instead of recovering the cost of its failures from the public.

He demanded that the provincial government withdraw the garbage tax decision at once, improve cleanliness and ensure the provision of basic civic facilities.

He also called on the government to fulfil its promises of relief and stop making citizens’ lives harder with more taxes and a heavier economic burden.

Jamaat-e-Islami would keep raising its voice against anti-people government decisions, he said, warning that the party would mount strong public resistance if the practice continued.

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