CHITRAL: The imposition of an exorbitant tax on potatoes being transported out of Lotkoh valley is not only cruel and a robbery on the farmers but is also a contempt of court, said the PPP Lower Chitral on Friday.
Qazi Faisal Ahmed Saeed, the PPP Lower Chitral general secretary and a candidate for the tehsil chairmanship in the local government elections, in a statement said stopping hundreds of trucks carrying potatoes from Lotkoh to down districts by the TMA after the imposition of Rs400 per bag was cruel when the whole country was devastated by floods.
The PPP leader said people of Lotkoh had voted Shahzada Amanur Rehman and made him chairman of the Tehsil Council but in return he had imposed the tax on the potato growers of the valley.
He said the Peshawar High Court’s Mingora bench on Octor 16, 2018, had declared the tax on potatoes illegal and said as the government was providing no facilities or incentives to the growers it had no right to tax them.
Mr Saeed said if the TMA continued taking the illegal tax from the potato growers, the PPP would be forced to mobilize the public against it.
It may be noted that people of Lotkoh have for long opposed levying of tax on potatoes and other vegetables. They were of the view that imposing any tax on the people of a specific area was discrimination and would never be acceptable to the locals.