Govt asks JI for three more days to decide on petroleum levy: Liaqat Baloch

• Jamaat-e-Islami seeks relief for public, says Liaquat Baloch. 
• Says bureaucratic hurdles complicate progress on six demands.
• Fazlur Rehman, Sohail Afridi back JI’s anti-levy campaign.
  

Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Naib Emir Liaqat Baloch on Thursday said the government had urged his party to postpone its final call for a long march until Monday, seeking three more days to decide on the petroleum levy issues.

Addressing a press conference, following the second round of talks with the government’s negotiating teams at Punjab House in Islamabad, the JI leader said: “We want relief for the public on petroleum products.”

Baloch said that the JI had presented the government with six demands. He said the bureaucrats presented “a heap of difficulties”.

The JI, earlier this week, had submitted six proposals concerning the petroleum levy to the government and decided to continue negotiations while keeping its protest ongoing.

Responding to a question, the JI leader said that the government had offered no response beyond “beating around the bush”.

Separately, JI Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman spoke by phone with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi.

Naeem said all opposition parties should raise their voice against inflation and public issues.

Fazl expressed support for the JI’s campaign against the petroleum levy, while Afridi called for relief for the public and praised the party’s democratic struggle on public issues.

Baloch on Monday had said: “The government had collected more revenue from the petroleum levy than the target set in the budget.”

The JI chief on Tuesday had issued a September 10 deadline for the government to withdraw the petroleum levy; otherwise, he had said, he would issue the final call for a march to Islamabad.

Addressing the participants of a sit-in outside the Sindh Governor House, he had said the JI was holding sit-ins in 32 cities across the country and that the struggle would be taken to its logical conclusion.

The JI leader had said the government claimed global oil prices had risen but did not reduce prices when international rates fell.

“The fluctuation in the global market is one thing, but there is no justification for this extortion tax,” he had said.

He had noted that the government first collected billions in the name of petroleum development levy and then “removed development and is now looting in the name of levy alone.”

He said Rs85 per litre levy and a total of Rs130 in taxes were being collected on every litre of petrol.

“A student and a biker who is not even a taxpayer pays Rs700 daily and Rs23,000 monthly in extortion,” he had said, adding that both a bike rider and a billionaire with a 2700cc vehicle paid the same tax.