A Member of Civil Society group, ‘Justice 4 Ghana,’ Selorm Dramani says the group will only end their picketing at the premises of Parliament after the E-levy has been thrown out.
The civil society group, announced the three-day picketing will start from January 25, 2022, indicating their objective is to register their dissatisfaction with the controversial E-levy Bill.
“The leadership of the above groups wishes to notify you about planned picketing at the Parliament House of Ghana from 25th to 27th January 2022 dubbed OccupyParliamentHouse. The event will not include a procession. OccupyParliamentHouse will start and end at Parliament House, with a sole objective of drawing attention to the public opposition to the e-levy and demand MPs vote according to the wishes of Ghanaians who they purport to represent.” a portion of the statement read.
“We will sleep here until our demands are met. We will not leave here because what Parliament is trying to do is just wrong. We will picket here until January 27 and hope a lot of others will join us soon.”
He explained that the picketing is to make sure Parliamentarians reject the E-levy. “We are here because of the E-levy and if we hear that the levy has been rejected we will fold our mats and pillows and go home. So far us the E-levy is still before Parliament we will not leave here.”
Encouraged by Don Kwabena Prah to register his concerns at the upcoming town hall meeting led by the Finance Minister on Thursday, January 27, 2022, Selorm Dramani asserted the move will be useless. “Ken Ofori-Atta is bent on implementing the E-levy and is just going to convince people to buy into it at the town hall meeting. We want them to throw the levy out of Parliament and that is it. The gov’t is acting like pickpockets and it is just wrong for them to do so.”
The E-levy is a new tax measure introduced by the government in the 2022 Budget on basic transactions related to digital payments and electronic platform transactions.
A charge of 1.75% will apply to electronic transactions that are more than GH¢100 on a daily basis.
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