THERE have been reports in the national media recently about a proposed move to raise property and water taxes in Islamabad massively by up to five times the existing rates. The ground reality is that residents include a lot of retried people whose means of income are minimal, if at all.

Any such move shall be seen as nothing but an effort to force them to sell their properties and move to villages and give the localcorruptrealestate sharks an opportunity to mint as much money as they can. This will accelerate demographic change already underway owing to partisan policies and smuggling-based economy. There is really no justification for Islamabad residents to be forced to fund not one but two bodies, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI), for doing, or not doing, pretty much the same set of tasks.

In addition, justice demands that property taxes be only imposed on properties generating revenue as the ones having been rented out. Nobody will mind even if the tax rates happen to be high in such cases because the owners will be paying the taxes from the wealth so generated.

Older properties, like, say, the ones that are over 30 years old, which now require a lot of maintenance and only fetch rents that are low, should have a reduced level of property tax. Self-occupied properties need tobe left alone altogether.

Likewise, water meters should be installed as usage varies much from house to house, and houses with borings use less water, or certain localities depend heavily on water tankers.

When Islamabad was established as a city, there was no buy-and-sell option in the property market. Only civil and military government servants were allowed to haveplots of land, and the whole idea was to discourage social mixing of government servants with businessman. Now, by the imposition of exorbitant property taxes, utility charges and deemed rental income theories, which are against audit laws, such people are being forced out of the city for whom this city was created in the first place.

Courts, too, whose orders brought a second body into being, the MCI, should feel the moral obligation to ensure that excessive taxation and property rate do not result in forced expulsion of the people.

M.L Shaikh Islamabad