Lamentations from traders in Juba – particularly small-scale traders have been aired out almost daily because of the unfair treatment that they receive from the Juba City Council. Small scale businesses owners have reported that they are taxed unfairly. One time, a respondent said, “I have to hide from these City Council people because the last time they told me to pay 45,000 SSP because my veranda was having an extension of my small shop.”
In a free market economy like South Sudan has, the prices of goods and services are not regulated by anybody not even the government and perhaps that explains why the dishonourable behaviour of most of the City Council personnel in Juba. They probably are in illusion of ‘these business owners make money daily, let me also use my office to squeeze money out of them’.
In yesterday’s paper which read “last year, majority of businesswomen in Juba blasted the Juba City Council as well as other tax collecting agencies for having failed to compromise their petty businesses over heavy and random tariffs. Women who run petty vegetable businesses are appealing to the government to exempt their petty businesses from taxes “since we only gain little from what we sell in the market” they argued.
When a donkey is tired of doing the hard labour, it will not allow moving it. When they get really worn out, they rebel against the owner or ‘user’ in this case because owners of animals care for them.
“Last time, the government in partnership with other organizations during a workshop for businesswomen promised to loan us money for starting businesses but up to now we don’t know where they have reached with their promises. If they were not sure of things, let them not promise” one of the small-scale businesswomen owners aired out.