ISLAMABAD: Capt. ® Shahbaz Nadeem, Director Municipal Administration, Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) along with Zafar Iqbal Additional Director and Khalid Hussain Abbasi Assistant Director visited Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry to discuss firefighting requirements for businesses & industry, board tax and trade license issues. Representatives of various markets were also present at the occasion.
Capt. ® Shahbaz Nadeem said that to save the businesses and industrial units from incidents, IMC wanted to bring their firefighting requirements at par with international standards as it was in their own interest. He said this issue will be resolved in consultation with stakeholders and no coercive measures would be taken for compliance.
Talking about board tax and trade license issues, he said that local government in Islamabad needed revenue to run its affairs. He said the annual expenditure of IMC was Rs.15 billion while its total tax collection was only Rs.1 billion and urged that business community should cooperate with IMC in improving revenue generation. However, he assured that board tax and trade license issues would also be resolved through consultation.
Speaking at the occasion, Khalid Iqbal Malik, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that business premises and industrial units were receiving notices for compliance of firefighting requirements but meeting these requirements was not feasible due to very high cost. He stressed that IMC should finalize these requirements as per need of different sectors of businesses and industries. He said IMC should ensure availability of fire fighting vehicles in industrial areas and markets to cope with any incident promptly.
He said CDA few years ago had agreed to charge Rs.60/sq yds as board tax from shops which was not implemented. He stressed that the already agreed rate should be implemented as traders were ready to pay this tax. He said trade license fee in Islamabad was quite high as compared to Rawalpindi and stressed that IMC should revise high trade license fee. It was agreed that representatives of ICCI and IMC would hold further meetings to sort out these three issues amicably.
Khalid Malik Senior Vice President, Tahir Ayub Vice President ICCI, Tariq Sadiq, Ajmal Baloch, Khalid Chaudhry, Muhammad Hussain and representatives of various markets also highlighted their issues for the attention of IMC.
