Businesses urged to pay their taxes

MT HAGEN can become a peaceful and safe place for doing business if business houses in the city pay their outstanding trading and garbage taxes to the city authority.
Acting Mt Hagen city manager Victor Megao said last Thursday that the city authority needed resources and funds to help create a safe environment for business to operate.
Mr Megao said many business houses did not pay their taxes and this sometimes made it difficult for them to help and beautify the city.
He said Mt Hagen was the third city and it must “prove to the people that it is a city”.
Mr Megao said the city authority had a vision to make Mt Hagen become a model city and business houses must be a part to that vision.
He said the city council alone could not do much to help clean up the city but it needed support from everyone including the business houses.
Mr Megao called on the business community to help and be a part of the development of the city by clearing rubbish in front of their trade store or food bars.
He also called on the chamber of commerce and individuals to help.
City authority rules inspector Robert Romba also called upon the business operating out of the city to pay up their taxes.
He said they must not think just because they were operating out of the city, they refused to pay taxes.
Mr Romba said if Mt Hagen city did not exist, how could they do business.
“Most of the time, many of these businesses operating out of the city refused to pay taxes,” he added.
“Businesses must know that Mt Hagen city is the centre point where businesses exist and not from the remote part of the province,” Mr Romba said.
He said many bad pictures had been painted about the city and the city authority had been blamed.
However, Mr Romba said everyone, including individuals and business houses, must question themselves on whether they had put in any effort to help keep the city clean.
Mr Romba said the standard of the city could not be maintained and improved unless the people and the business houses put in an effort to help the city authority carry out its vision.