Confederation of All Telangana Consumer Organisations (CATCO) has appealed to the Telangana Government to be responsive to the concerns of consumers post implementation of Goods and Services Tax.
Even as farmers and other sections of people in rural areas were still struggling with cash crunch as a result of demonetisation, the GST imposition brought fresh set of problems, said the CATCO representatives.
Farmers were standing in long queues in front of banks waiting for their turn to draw just ₹ 5,000 per day. The ATMs on other hand which charged ₹ 100 as service charge a year were not functioning for the last six months in rural areas. Even in urban areas, 80% of ATMs were not functioning due to lack of currency notes.
People who wanted to make cash transactions instead of paying service charges on debit and credit card by banks were unhappy as they were now forced to use plastic cards and also being penalised for doing so, said CATCO Chairman N. Srinivas and Secretary General A. Bala Kishan. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, they said that it was important to bring petroleum products under the GST as at present 54% of taxes were levied on them. The price would be cut by half if brought under the GST and would also bring down the prices of essential commodities due to reduction in the transportation cost. The GST being implemented after 20 years of efforts was now in a transition stage and people had no issues to pay through debit and credit cards but they should be given relief from the service charges levied by the banks. Taking note of these concerns of people, the Government should review the GST implementation, they said. The Confederation, they said, had represented to the Prime Minister to cut annual service charges on ATMs as they had not been operational for the last six months. The proposal was now referred to the Bankers’ Committee.
The CATCO also expressed its serious concern over inordinate delay in filling vacancies in District Consumer Fora which resulted in thousands of cases pending for the last four years. “We expected Telangana Government to empathise with consumers’ problems and back the consumer movement. But it remained indifferent so far,” it said.
