Amnesty a joke with honest tax payers

F.P. Report

LAHORE: Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq, has said that the latest amnesty scheme has been introduced to whiten the black money of the tax evaders sitting in the government and was an immoral step.

Talking to the media after attending the Senate session on Monday, he said that the amnesty scheme was making a mockery of those Pakistanis who were paying their taxes honestly. Sirajul Haq also criticized the Presidential ordinances covering the amnesty scheme. He said the sole purpose of the promulgation of these ordinances after summoning the parliament was to avoid a discussion on the issue in the house.

The government, he said, had the apprehension that the members of the parliament might question about the outcome of the previous such schemes for which the government was not ready.

Sirajul Haq said that before introducing the amnesty scheme, the government should have held a discussion on the issue in the parliament and economists should have been invited to brief the parliamentarians on all its aspects. However, he said that the scheme aad been introduced in haste.

The JI chief said that after every four or five years, the tax evaders among the rulers advised the government to introduce such a scheme that would provide them an opportunity to whiten their black money.

He said the amnesty scheme was not aimed at widening the tax net. Instead, it was meant to provide relief to all those who had plundered the public money and evaded taxes.

He said the proper way to deal with such elements was to arrest them and to proceed them under the law. However, he said, the rulers were afraid that if this process began, most of those around them would be hauled up.