Call to withdraw new tax on tobacco growers

MARDAN: Provincial president of Anjuman-e-Haqooq-e-Tahaffuz-e-Kashtkaran, Naimat Shah Roghani, has said that the government had imposed Rs390 per kilogram tax on tobacco leaves, which he termed cruelty against the province’s farmers and demanded the federal government to immediately take back the levy.

Speaking to media persons, Roghani said that the federal government and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had imposed the tax on tobacco in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while they did not impose it in Punjab province.

He argued that the finance minister and FBR should also impose a tax on tobacco produced in Punjab and immediately ban or impose heavy taxes on tobacco imported from foreign countries. He said it was a conspiracy of the multinational tobacco companies to wipe out KP’s small and local tobacco factories and have their own monopoly.

Naimat Shah added that tobacco is the cash crop of KP and nearly 2 million people were earning from it. He added that thousands of people were working in local tobacco companies.

Pension issue: General Secretary of All Pakistan Clerks Association (Apca) Aurangzeb Kashmiri criticised the provincial government for reducing pensions and said that they would file a writ petition in the Peshawar High Court against it.

Speaking to journalists, Aurangzeb Kashmiri said that the provincial government was targeting government employees in different ways.

He added that in the current year, hundreds of employees would retire at the age of 60 years but the cuts on pensions would badly affect them.