‘Govt has not levied any new tax on Karachiites’

KARACHI: Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh has claimed that the Sindh government has not imposed any new tax on the residents of Karachi and it has just sought to avail the monthly billing mechanism of the K-Electric to recover the two taxes the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation has been receiving from the city for the last several decades.

Talking to media persons at the Sindh Assembly building on Friday, the energy minister said all the residents of Karachi had not been paying these two taxes on a regular basis. He said the recovery of these taxes had only taken place along with fine, when the ownership of any property in the city stood transferred after its sale.

He said the Sindh government had decided to collect these taxes while adding their charges to the monthly electricity bills being sent to the residents of Karachi to improve tax collection in the city.

He said the Sindh government had decided to call for convening a joint session of the parliament to consider its appeal against the recent decisions of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) that had completely rejected the upcoming energy projects of Sindh that are capable of producing inexpensive electricity.

He said the chief minister, after attending the CCI meeting, had written a note of dissent to register his protest in this regard. He claimed the federal government had been deliberately taking action to cause harm to the upcoming energy projects of Sindh.

He said the recent decisions of the CCI regarding the energy sector shouldn’t be finalised till the time they were discussed by the joint sitting of parliament. He said the ruling PTI would not get any votes from the people of Sindh due to its unjust steps against the province by rejecting its upcoming energy projects.

He demanded that an inquiry committee should be constituted to probe the issue of overcharging by the power distribution companies in Sindh as consumers had to pay extra millions of rupees due to the bogus billing method.

He said a representative of the Sindh government should be included in the proposed probe committee, adding that the monthly bills being sent by the power companies in Sindh should duly mention the dates of meter reading.