Tax on teaching
Recently, I came to know that in the National Budget 2008 the government has planned to increase the tax on private teachers. Owing to the increased benefits obtained from receiving education, people, even the villagers who cannot afford a day's meal, wish to educate their children. These days, as you might know, the English medium students are greatly encouraged to move to private coaching centres. This is partly because the skilled teachers no longer prefer to teach in schools. Instead, they open their own private coaching centres where there is a higher profit. So to obtain a better grade we are compelled to take private coaching. However, there is an increasing number of coaching centres providing educational facilities for the HSC and the SSC examinees. The government has already imposed a tax on them for which most of the private teachers have increased their fees. Now with an increase in taxes they might increase their fees. In fact, many of them have already done so. We, who belong to the middle-class families, suffer the most. The rich can easily afford this whilst the extremely poor cannot even dream of it. With the rising prices of the basic necessities, we find it extremely difficult to pay these extra fees. Most of us are working to help our parents financially but the income earned is still insufficient to meet the household expenditure. I ask, with all due respect, how is the government compensating for this? If we do not go to the coaching centres we fail to obtain a better grade. This might force many of the guardians, though unwillingly, to abandon the education of their children. In the context of receiving higher tax revenues claimed to be spent for the welfare of the economy, is the government ignoring the fact that Bangladesh is indeed a country where a citizen after twenty-four hours of hard work still fails to afford a wholesome meal for his entire family? What is the use of such revenues if they cannot be spent on the purpose for which they had been initially imposed?
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