Chiagoziem Otutubuike
The Issue of Multiple taxation and levies has been a major concern to some residents of Anambra State over the years.
From tricycle operators to shuttle bus drivers, shop owners, companies among others, the story is the same as they keep calling on government to come to their aid. They plead for an end to illegal revenue agents parading across the state.
The responsive government of Professor Chukwuma Soludo listened to the cries for intervention by initiating measures to ensure that citizens pay their all revenues directly to government coffers.
The Governor also established an Anti-Touting Squad code named SASA with the aim of identifying and apprehending illegal revenue collectors who it suspected to be primarily behind the problem of multiple taxation.
Sadly, those measures have not solved the problem. Only recently, the Anambra Tricycle Riders Association (ANTRA) an umbrella body for keke riders, petitioned the state House of Assembly.
In the petition, they highlighted the difficulties and dangers they face in the hands of illegal agents who often times parade as government representatives.
They demanded independence as an organization with readiness to pay all statutory fees directly into government approved accounts.
Resolutions of the house
The Assembly, through its Committee on Public Petition, looked at the prayers of the petitioners and took a resolution which ANTRA described as responsive.
The House, during plenary resolved into the Committee of the Whole, where members took time to consider the report as presented by the Public Petition Chairman, Bar. Obi Nweke representing Anambra East Constituency.
After reading the recommendations of the Committee, Bar. Nweke enjoined the law makers to adopt the report to stand as a working document of the House.
In the resolution which followed the adoption of committee’s recommendations as a working document, the House restated the stand of the state government against touting.
The house declared whoever collects any fee from the petitioners in government’s name as criminal. resisted.
The recommendations acknowledged the presence of many scavengers in Onitsha and across the state. They charged the Anti Touting Squad to take a closer look at the activities of the petitioners and get rid of all the scavengers in the operations of keke riders including one “Governor Obosi” in Onitsha.
The Resolution also recommended to the Commissioner for Transport to give a written authority to ANTRA to manage its own affairs especially with regards to collection of fees, rates and dues.
It also charged ANTRA members to committedly remit the agreed sum to the government as directed by the Governor.
ANTRA lauded resolutions
The Chairman, ANTRA, Comrade Chidozie Okafor described the house resolutions as firm and impartial in defending the interest of the helpless in their lawmaking mandate.
He pledged ANTRA’s total support to the Soludo’s administration while encouraging members to promptly pay the approved fees to government coffers.
Comrade Okafor noted that the present administration has put the revenues being collected into good use as seen in massive road construction and other numerous projects that positively impact the citizens.
