The Sindh government has officially halted tax collection for the Centre, a day after Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said that the province had conveyed the message to the federal government in this regard.

The Sindh Excise and Taxation Department’s Motor Registration wing has halted the collection of withholding taxes, it said. Sindh Minister for Excise and Taxation and Narcotics Control and Parliamentary Affairs Mukesh Kumar Chawla said that the tax collection has been stopped under a decision taken by the Sindh Cabinet.

Chawla said that the federal government “should now make the mechanism for collecting the withholding tax by itself”.

Earlier, Murad Ali Shah Shah had announced that the provincial government would not collect advance income tax on behalf of the federal government. Shah urged the federal government to take better care of citizens as the public would no longer tolerate how important national issues were being handled by the Centre.

In his address to the Sindh Assembly, Shah was of the view that the federal government had handled the issues of sugar, flour, petrol and the recent crisis of locusts to the utter disadvantage of the people.

He informed the House that the federal government had a separate ministry for national food security and research, and another dedicated agency for plants that must deal with the locust emergency, but these institutions were yet to come into action against the emerging problem threatening the food security of Pakistan.

He said the federal authorities had not fulfilled their obligations regarding aerial spray to be conducted against the locust swarms in the province. He added that the Centre had also not lived up to its commitment to provide aircraft for conducting aerial spray against locusts in Sindh.

The chief minister maintained that his government had been compelled to take such a decision after the federal government unilaterally took an adverse decision regarding the levy of the income tax.