The government has decided to provide full-time cars for the Members of Parliament, scrapping their previous privilege of duty-free import of cars that had created many controversies. Stating this an agency report quoted official sources as saying that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently gave her approval to a proposal for giving cars to the 345 MPs of the present parliament. The MPs of the 9th Parliament from the very beginning urged the government to allow them to import duty-free cars. But the government after several months has decided to provide official cars for the lawmakers.Till the end of the tenure of the eighth Parliament MPs were allowed to import duty-free cars. But there were widespread allegations that many MPs sold out their imported high-end cars and used ordinary ones instead. In June 2007, the then caretaker government promulgated an ordinance rescinding the provision for the special privilege provided under the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Allowances) Order 1973. But the ordinance was not ratified by parliament, resulting in the restoration of the previous provision of the law under which an MP is entitled to import one car or jeep free of customs duty, sales tax, development surcharge and import-permit fee. The provision was introduced on May 24, 1987 during the rule of General HM Ershad and was amended on August 28, 2002 with retrospective effect from July 1 that year. In exercise of the provision, lawmakers of the eighth parliament imported over 275 luxury cars, depriving the National Board of Revenue (NBR) of taxes amounting to over Tk 280 crore as taxes for most of these luxury cars range from 73.91 per cent to 196.10 per cent. Meanwhile, Speaker Advocate Abdul Hamid said recently that emolument of Members of Parliament will be increased soon in view of the rise in cost of living. It may be mentioned that emolument of the Prime Minister, ministers, state ministers, deputy ministers and Members of Parliament were raised last in May, 2005 for keeping compatibility with the enhancement of salary of government officers and employees under 6th National Pay Scale. The emolument of the parliament members then was increased by 50 percent. Now, the implementation of the seventh National Pay scale for the government officials and employees will be followed by enhancement of the emolument of the MPs. In a nutshell, since independence 38 years ago, the MPs, who are the public representatives, are set to get their emolument increased for eleventh occasions besides facilities for duty-free car import or government vehicles and the government officials, who are public servants, have got increased pay scale on seventh occasions, but the people of the country, who pay for all these, have got only increased taxes, sky-rocketing prices of essentials and mounting miseries over the years. The ministers and MPs managed for themselves enough solace and the government employees also received some respite, but the vast majority of the people got no relief and continue to bear the brunt of taxes and soaring cost of living helplessly. To the dismay of the people their elected representatives have made good use of their power and position to fatten their pay package and enhance facilities without doing anything substantial to redress the sufferings of the people despite electoral commitment to do so. It appears to have become a common practice on the part of the ruling party MPs to enhance facilities of themselves as well as others in the administration at the cost of the common people. The people realise that they are being victims of milking, but they are unable to do anything. But this should not continue for long. The already deprived and exploited people should not be exploited further for the interest of the privileged and those in the helm. Something should be done for their solace as well.
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