The business community has strongly reacted to the imposition of penalties on traders by raiding teams of different government departments and warned to announce shutter down strike if the actions against shopkeepers was not stopped forthwith.
Speaking at a meeting of traders here on Monday, Markazi Tanzeem-e-Tajiran Peshawar President Malik Meher Ilahi said that different departments including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety & Halal Food Authority, district administration, food department and revenue departments had started conducting separate raids and teasing the business community on different pretexts.
He said that on one hand the traders had badly suffered due to bus rapid transit (BRT) where business activities had almost come to a standstill and many of the traders had shut their workplaces or shifted to other cities in search of livelihood and on the other government had started imposing heavy fines on name of taxes. "Our community people are arrested on pretext of tax evasions, violation of KP food act 2014, encroachments without any prior notice which is tantamount to force the people flee from Peshawar," he lamented and warned that if the traders were not allowed to work then they would have the only option to agitate.
He pointed out that the fines were so heavy that the small scale shopkeepers could not pay them and thus had to go to prison. He said that the deputy commissioner Peshawar Dr Imran Hamid Shaikh should take notice of the prevailing situation to stop the concerned raiding parties from conducting raids as the traders were unable to pay the fines. In addition, he said that complaints against halal food authority were also on the increase and vendors/ shopkeepers had the only options to stop earning livelihood or start agitation. He said that the small scale businesspersons had to sale out different items of domestic use to pay the fines as they were unable to clear the penalties even in six months.
"We have already faced worst kind of financial crisis due to the one-decade terrorism but the government did not extend us financial support to revive the business activities," he said and urged the rulers to support the BRT-affected traders.
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