Looting the exchequer
Published in The Express Tribune on July 19, 2013
KARACHI: This is with reference to the news
item “Gas, power theft: 3 factories fined Rs160m” (July 16). One of the
factories that has been mentioned in the story had been stealing electricity
and gas for seven years and, incredibly, neither the SNGPL nor the MEPCO
officials had suspected any wrongdoing. Or were they complicit in the thefts?
If that is the case, one of the first things the government should do is to
punish them.
Secondly, since the factory
has been fined a total of Rs135 million for gas and electricity theft, and
utility charges are two per cent of the cost of production, it is safe to
assume that the factory was producing goods worth a billion rupees every year
for seven years (on which a sizeable amount of sales tax and income tax should
have been paid). Will the income tax and sales tax authorities take action to
recover the huge amount of more than a billion rupees, which this factory owner
did not pay while he was looting the national exchequer for seven years? Or
will this be another typical Pakistani story where the thief is a close
relative of some very powerful people in Islamabad and will get away with the
scam?
Shakir Lakhani
https://tribune.com.pk/story/578727/looting-the-exchequer/
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