In Tandojam, toll tax turns to trouble

Reluctance to pay tax for intra-city movement has seen over 500 people booked.

HYDERABAD:

Travelling within Tandojam is getting uglier day by day. Due to the reluctance of citizens to pay toll tax for their intra-city movement, dozens of brawls erupt every day at the toll plaza set up on the newly built Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas dual carriageway.

Over the past two months, more than 500 people have been booked in separate cases registered with the police by the plaza staff. In the most recent FIR lodged at the Rahuki police station, the man nominated is a scientist working for the Sindh agriculture research department.

The 67-kilometre Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas carriageway was built under a public-private partnership between the Sindh government and South Korean company Doek Jae. The highway takes off from Tandojam and passes through the Tando Allahyar district bypass before ending in the Mirpurkhas district.

The Doek Jae spokesperson, Hashim Rajar, acknowledges the problems faced by the regular commuters. He says the company had recommended exempting Hyderabad’s motorcyclists from tax but the Sindh works and services secretary turned down the proposal.

Tandojam, situated in the Hyderabad rural taluka, has a population of over 150,000 and is home to the Sindh Agriculture University (SAU), Central Veterinary Laboratory, Vaccination Production Laboratory, Agriculture Engineering Workshop, Drainage and Reclamation Institute of Pakistan and the Sindh agriculture research department.

But since mid-September, when the works and services department notified the road tax, there has been an outcry by the citizens travelling within Tandojam or to Hyderabad. At the forefront is the staff at the educational and administrative organisations, which frequently visit the district headquarters. However, the workers of toll plaza and the Sindh works and services department, a partner in the Rs5.7 billion joint venture, insist they have to pay.

Last month’s efforts by the Hyderabad commissioner, Ahmed Baksh Narejo, who formed a committee to work out concessional proposals for toll tax, are yet to yield a solution while the brawls continue between the plaza staff and the citizens.

On November 1, the associations representing the SAU teachers, officers and staff began a movement against, what they assert is, “illegal tax” and manhandling of people. They also staged a sit-in demonstration blocking the Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas road.



“They force us to pay toll tax and if we refuse, they humiliate and beat us up,” said Prof Suresh Kumar Wadhani, the president of SAU teachers association, leading the protesters. Wadhani contended that the tax should not be collected until the committee formed by the Hyderabad commissioner comes up with a solution. “Honourable people are being humiliated under the garb of tax,” Ghulam Moheyuddin Qureshi of the SAU officers’ association said.

The staff of Sindh agriculture research department organised a separate protest to condemn the assault on Mukhtiar Channa, who claimed he was taken out of his car and thrashed by the toll plaza workers.

On October 31, Channa had lodged an FIR at the Rahuki police station a few hours after the incident, nominating the Doek Jae spokesperson among 12 suspects. In a counter FIR, the government officer was also booked by the toll plaza staff, said SHO Fazal Zardari.

Although the Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas dual carriageway will take at least another four months to complete, according to Hashim Rajar, the toll plaza began collecting tax from mid-September. On September 12, toll taxes of Rs175 for trailer trucks, Rs140 for trucks and large buses, Rs110 for mini-trucks, vans and minibuses, Rs40 for cars and Rs15 for motorcycles had been notified. The collection of toll tax has been outsourced to a Rawalpindi-based company, HyPass Systems.

Works and services executive engineer, Manzoor Shah, who is also the dual carriageway’s project manager, justifies the levy. “The road has been built from billions of rupees taken in bank loans. We won’t be able to repay if we waive off taxes of the whole population,” he explained.

The Korean firm, which will maintain the road and collect tax on build-operate-transfer basis for 30 years, has to build rest rooms, a medical facility and an emergency ambulance service among other services. None of these facilities have been introduced yet.

Over a dozen Frontier Constabulary soldiers and private security guards have been deployed at both ends of the dual carriageway as the toll plaza in Mirpurkhas is also facing a similar backlash. But Hashim Rajar has a word of advice. People should approach the Sindh government with their demands instead of taking law in their hands, he says.

The protesters have, however, called for an “indefinite” blockade of the Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas highway on December 4 until they are exempted from the tax.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2012.