Four abducted in Faisalabad

FAISALABAD: Four persons, including a minor boy, were abducted in separate incidents here on Saturday.

Bilal Ahmad was allegedly abducted from Chak 20/RB while the wife of Suleman Masih was abducted from Shamasabad. A married woman of Chak 6 was allegedly abducted by Ramazan and others whereas the wife of Allah Ditta of Chak 202 was allegedly abducted by Amir Shahzad and others.

recommendations: The Standing Committee of the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs will submit its final recommendations regarding CNIC and GST during next week to the government.

It was said by FCCI president Rana Sikandar Azam after attending a meeting of the committee here on Saturday. The FCCI chief said that he opposed the mandatory provision of CNIC and GST on five major export sectors which were the main cause of current slump in the economic activities. The meeting of the committee was chaired by Ramesh Kumar while Ayesha Ghaus Bux and Nafeesa Shah attended it as its members, he told. The FCCI chief said that he represented the business community of Faisalabad along with Engineer Ahtesham Javed, Chairman of All Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association, its secretary Muhammad Ashraf and Rana Ikram, executive member of the FCCI in addition to Seema Shakeel, member FBR and Javed Balwani, Chairman of PHMA Karachi.

Rana Sikandar told the subcommittee that the FCCI members were already registered with the FBR and were paying their due taxes but the government departments in order to expand the tax net were using them as bait.

He clarified that it was the sole responsibility of tax officials to dig out new taxpayers by themselves but they were putting their responsibility on others as they also had the genuine capacity problems.

He told that the FBR had enforced these conditions without considering their negative or positive impacts. He told that as a result of these conditions the overall businesses are facing worst type of slump.

He also indicated that the tax chain was incomplete and honest businessmen were facing multiple problems not only from their sellers and buyers but also facing undue pressure from the government departments. He told that the businesses could be segregate into manufacturing, agency holders, dealers and retailers. The government could easily collect GST which was a consumer tax at the manufacturing stage but it had created harassment among all the four tiers, he lamented.

He proposed that the government should only demand CNIC from manufacturers and agency holders at this stage. The remaining two tiers may be exempted from this condition for next two to three years, he proposed. He said that the government was not only responsible to clamp taxes but its 100pc recovery was also its responsibility.