Cinemas exempted from tax on governor’s orders, PA told
Karachi: Sindh Minister for Excise and Taxation Mukesh Kumar Chawla told the Sindh Assembly on Tuesday that cinema houses in the province were exempted from entertainment tax only on the verbal instructions of the governor, saying that a formal notification to this effect had to be issued by the government after the house approved such exemption.
Chawla was replying to supplementary questions of MPAs during the question-hour session pertaining to the working and performance of his department. “No doubt, the declining cinema industry needs special concessions from the government for the revival of entertainment industry but it should be done in a more formal manner and not merely on the basis of verbal orders,” he said.
The minister said his department faced limitations in the collection of the entertainment tax owing to the tax exemption on the governor’s instructions and also due to the fact that themajority of the cinemas in the city happened to be located in cantonment areas where cantonment boards received the tax.
To another query regarding the unchecked and illegal sale and service of liquor by restaurants, he said only five-star hotels of the city were authorised and licensed to procure Pakistani-brewed liquor and serve it to only foreigners.
Khurrum Sher Zaman of the PTI complained that various restaurants in Defence and Clifton have been brazenly serving liquor to their customers and no government authority was checking this flourishing illegal and immoral activity.
MQM deputy parliamentary leader Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan said an adjournment motion should be moved in the house since it was first reported in the house that prostitutes were spotted on every other nook and corner of Defence and Clifton every evening.
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