RAWALPINDI:The Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) on Tuesday launched a crackdown against owners of five-marla houses who had not paid their property taxtill2007.

In 2004, the then chief minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi announced to exempt small houses measuring up to five marlas from the property tax. However, the Punjab Assembly passed the law in 2007 after which owners of thesmall houses approached the cantonment boards. The civic agencies asl(ed the owners to submit their water bills and building plans to avail of the facility.

There are more than 33,000 five-marla and less than fivemarla houses in the cantonment limits. Over 60 per cent of the houses below five marlas were constructed three to four decades ago and their owners did not have building plans which created problems for providing them the tax exemption facility.

However, the law approved bythe provincial assembly in 2007 did not bind the owners to produce building plans or maps to get the facility.

On Tuesday, the civic body launched a campaign to recover the amount from the five-marla houses. Teams sealed some houses in Azizabad with residents claiming that women and children were inside when the RCB officials sealed the gates.

They said the tax branch officials launched the drive without any orders from magistrates.

A senior official of the RCB saidthe civic bodies in cantonment areas had sent a proposal to the government to withdraw the tax exemption on five marla houses as it was causing loss of over R s300 to Rs400 million annually.

However, he said, the proposal was rejected after which the civic agency decided to recover the old property tax dues.

RCB spokesman Qaiser Mehmood told Dawn that the action had been initiated against chronic tax defaulters as the owners failed to clear the dues of many years till 2007.He said notices were issued in advance of the campaign. The owners have not been asked to pay the property tax after 2007 when the law was implemented, he added.

He rejected the claim of some residents that their families remained confined in their houses when the officials sealed the doors.

`We sealed the main doors while side gates or other doors remain open. There is no restriction on the families to come in and out,` he said.