Social contract - Tax payers should be given security: Silia

Leader of small traders addresses reception in Shikarpur.

SHIKARPUR: Even though traders and businessmen are paying their taxes, the government has failed to protect their lives and property, said the chairman of the All Pakistan Small Traders Organisation (APSTO), Muhammad Umar Silia, who has returned from exile after 10 years.

“The government has failed to provide us security,” he said at the reception arranged in his honour by the All Small Traders and Cottage Industry Association, Shikarpur at the new grain market on Tuesday. Silia went into exile after being threatened for protesting against the sales tax.

Silia said that small traders would launch a campaign against the proposed Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) just as they did when former president Pervez Musharraf tried to impose it. This tax would only burden poor people and they are already beset by problems such as unemployment and inflation.

Silia called upon small traders and businessmen to unite and prepare to fight against the proposed tax on the trading and business communities. He warned they would launch a campaign soon after he holds a convention in Lahore.

Earlier, the organisation’s vice chairman Haji Haroon Memon and president of the small traders association in Shikarpur, Haji Nisar Ahmed Memon, also addressed the gathering. Traders and businessmen at the reception expressed their confidence in the central leadership of Silia and promised to take part in the campaign against RGST.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th,  2011.