Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Entertainment? Not Anymore

Yesterday, my sons asked me and my wife to accompany them to watch the newly released move “Salt.” Since we could not celebrate the birthday of our elder son as he was away to Karachi for his internship, we gladly obliged. We went to the Cinepax cinema complex in Jinnah Park, Chaklala Rawalpindi for the movie. These cinemas, though a bit expensive, are much cleaner as compared to other cinemas in town and aren’t overcrowded. But this time it was different.

Normally the ticket is around Rs. 250 that also included a Rs. 50 voucher for snacks. But this time, the ticket was for Rs. 400, which was really disturbing. When asked the reason, I was appalled to know that the honourable chief minister aka “Khadam-e-Punjab (the servant of people of the Punjab)” has imposed a 65% entertainment tax on cinema tickets. So we were to pay some Rs. 157.00 as entertainment tax for each ticket that we purchased. Isn’t this disgusting?


There are hardly any places left for entertainment around the city and the ones that are open to public have been levied this unjust tax. How can then we have entertainment if at all we want to? For the personal comfort of the top elite of the province, we have bullet proof cars at the expense of the tax payers of the province and their other lavish style of movement and governance. For their cars, even tyres costing millions are purchased after every few months. When they move, they have dozens of escort cars as if some foreign head of state is moving. Platoons of Police and other agencies are posted on their entire route for their protection. All this cost money and all this money goes from the funds that should have reserved for the welfare of the public. But as if there is a shortage of money for their lavish life style that required extra funds, which now seem to be realized from this imposition of this enhanced entertainment tax.


If sanity still prevails in some quarters, I would demand of these so called servants of the people to let people have some entertainment by not adding on the entrainment tax but by reducing/curtailing the expenditures that are incurred on their self.

4 comments:

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Mr. Gandhi told Nehru once he took over as first PM of India :-
"Never ever raise the price of Atta, Khadder and cinema ticket. If you ensure stable prices of all these 3 commodities, you can rule India for decades to come."

Our Honorable Rulers are doing exactly the opposite of Mr. Gandhi advice and soon they will be shown the Exit Door. They really deserve it.

Look at the tax on transaction of money from one bank to other bank as so on.......

Hail Zardari and his clan...............

Thanks Jalal for mentioning this fleecing excise going on everywhere. And Khalid, there is no one to advice our rulers and we allow them to keep fleecing.

Advice or no advice - nothing can move our politicians as they are not "leaders" - they only come to fleece and go away - only to return for more...

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