An open letter to the Sindh Minister of Excise &Taxation

An open letter to the Sindh Minister of Excise &Taxation
This refers to a Government of Sindh advertisement that appeared in the newspapers on 20th July 2014. It is not clear as to why the ‘ad’ chooses to threaten the citizens of punitive action if they failed to pay the motor vehicle tax. Could you not have your ‘ad’ edited by a semi-educated or at least a cultured person before being released to press. Do you also realize that it is neither appropriate nor ethical to have your personal photograph included in an official advertisement that was paid for by the tax payers’ money. In a civilized country you would have been made to reimburse this amount to the state exchequer.

Now a few more serious questions. In your entire fleet of a few authorised and many unauthorised official vehicles, not one has paid its motor vehicle tax for past many years. Besides not paying taxes, some four to eight thousand Sindh Government vehicles are not even registered with the Excise & taxation Department. It ill behoves you to demand motor vehicle taxes from citizens when your entire government fleet is itself delinquent in meeting this requirement.
Lastly you may wish to spend some time in improving the archaic and bureaucratic motor vehicle tax payment system. One needs to make a number of visits before one can run into the good fortune of an operator present on his seat and the computer system working at the payment office. Please close down all payment offices and enable every citizen to make tax payment on-line or using SMS based mobile phone money transfer system. You could reduce the misery suffered by citizens by allowing tax payments to be made for up to five years at a time instead of just one. Finally the good minister can put an end to the numerous needless visits made by the tax payers, only if your department could first time issue the tokens/stickers for the full duration of tax payment.