One has the highest respect for the Sindh Police’s recent initiative of cracking down on illegal vehicles.
KARACHI: When a government fails to comply with its own laws, it is left with very little moral justification to demand the same from its citizens. Let us examine just one area — unlawful vehicles. The government of Sindh alone has some 16,000 vehicles purchased with the taxpayers’ money for the official use of its functionaries. The following facts emerge as a result of a short study carried out on government vehicles:
1) Some 2,000 government vehicles are not registered with the Excise and Taxation (E&T) Department. They deprive the E&T department of registration fee and essentially fall in the category of illegal vehicles; 2) the government has failed to ensure transparency by neglecting to place the registration details of government vehicles on the E&T website like it has done for the vehicles of ordinary citizens; 3) the government has no tradition of paying the yearly motor vehicle tax for its vehicles. This places almost 100 per cent of the government vehicles in the category of tax-evaders and law violators; 4) only about half of the government vehicles use the officially supplied number plates while others invent their own concoctions; 5) 70 per cent of the vehicles checked were being used by friends and family of official functionaries and not for official use; 6) there are scores of people, who have retired or are no longer in this world, who still have government vehicles registered to their names.
One has the highest respect for the Sindh Police’s recent initiative of cracking down on illegal vehicles. Its results could have been twice as amazing only if the charity had begun at home.
Naeem Sadiq
Published in The Express Tribune, October 5th, 2013.
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