Consumers formed human chain to reduce tax on bidi in Sylhet

Around 700 consumers have formed a human chain to reduce the tax on bidi industry from this fiscal year to run the industry.
They also placed five points of demands, including withdrawal of recently hiking of 4 percent tax on each packet of bidi and stimulating the financial assistance to the bidi cultivators and traders.
The consumers also requested the authorities concerned to fix the price of each packet of low quality cigarette at Tk 100 while each packet of bidi Tk 10 only and taking intitiative to ban of duplicat bidi in the markets across the country.
The demands were placed to the journalists from a human chain under the banner of ‘Bidi Consumers Association’ at Mendibagh in Sylhet city on Sunday.
The speakers claimed that a vested quarter have increased 4 percent tax in each packet from the beginning of the current fiscal year while they hiked only two percent in each packet of low and medium level cigarettes that clear the conspiracy against the bidi industry.
A good number of bidi customers have started to consume cigarette after hiking the price of bidi from the current fiscal year 2020-21 that may occupy the bidi market by the cigarette and lead to damage the bidi industry, they continued.
Following the hiking tax on bidi, maximum owners and producers have closed their factories that snatching the livelihood of several lakh ultra-poor bidi workers and small traders, they said.
They requested the Prime Minister to save the bidi industry by taking necessary initiatives to save the lives of workers and traders amid the cornona pandemic.
Bidi Consumers Association’s Sylhet unit President Md Mashiur Rahman, General Secretary Zakir Hossain, and Sylhet Sramik League President Ensan Ali, among other, spoke in the program.