The time should come when we really should start using the “I’m a tax payer!” and really mean it.
In many places our rights are badly mutilated or even purely carpet bombed and the only thing we can do is maybe curse under our breath. Of course I’m not saying it doesn’t mean things would be easy and the “I’m a tax payer!” message would scare some back to the right senses. Take the minibus taxis in the city. The world of the minibus taxis is so muddled, so out of shape that you’ve to experience it to realize its real feeling. I mean the crowd managing the minibuses the chauffeurs, the aids, the controllers and the whole lot seem to have carved out their own unique world out there. Of course it’s not that every one of them fall into that pit of wrongdoing. But many of them do fall, and fall very deep.
Say then fare from one place to another is ten birr as the piece of paper awkwardly hanging behind the chauffeur tells you. During the normal hours, or working hours, things are quite smooth and every one of them seem to be headed for the gates of the heaven. But once the sun starts shying away behind the mountain tops their real selves come out and then, whether you like it or not, you know what the words selfish and even vicious means. With the working hours over and people clamor to get home as early as possible the ax falls, and falls heavy. The ten-birr fare is raised to twenty birr. What!
“We’re not paying a single cent more than ten birr!” A hero is born! Isn’t that good? I mean someone standing for the rights of the crowd is good news all the way, isn’t it? But then his isn’t the turning point of the story, the reactions of the chauffeurs and the aids is. They said twenty and it’s twenty! That’s when you lose some confidence in the standing-for-your-rights rhetoric. Some of the passengers insist that they pay the twenty birr demanded so that they could reach home before the night gets any darker.
“Hey we’re trying to ensure our rights are respected and you are trying to destroy that!” No one says that as enthusiastically as it might sound on paper. I tell you if such things happened in a few places and they hit the headline and also those entrusted with the wellbeing of the public come out with guns blazing hitting the culprits where it hurts more, their wallets, things would have been improved with speed that would have left us wide eyed. Indeed there should come the time when we really stand on our own feet, dig deep, and say, “I’m a tax payer!” and the culprits whoever they might be would be running for cover.
You go to a certain office to claim some document which has been making the rounds of multiple offices within the organization for reasons you really couldn’t understand.
It seems that those people think that if every and any document makes the rounds of multiple offices before finally being signed, the place gets that thumbs-up prize with the appreciation, “They are so careful in their works that a single document be it one page or multiple pages, goes in almost every office before getting the final seal. But when you try to investigate what the document is doing on all those tables you’d probably throw up your arms with, “I tell you in some paces everything is hopeless.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You could strike out the seven offices and everything would have been finalized in only the first three offices.” Talk of inefficiency and you get nothing more interesting than such scenarios. All this time the client is suffering all those sleepless nights because every time he demands for his documents he’s told, “It’s in Ato such and such’s office.” What Ato such and such has to do with your particular case is the mother of all riddles for you. And if everything has been normal and life was somewhat fair you’d have said something like, “I’m a tax payer;” and that would have done the trick. In fact if that was a simple jab you might add something like “You’re paid your salary with the taxes we pay,” that would have been the most brutal uppercut and the culprits would be gazing at the empty sky flat on their backs!
Yes, the time should come when people’ would say “I’m a taxpayer!” and Satan would be running for the hills his tail between his legs. But no; we’re a long way of that road and it’d take time to come back to the highway of fair treatment and the establishment of real respect for the taxpayer.
Look Hollywood must have put all the wrong concoctions into our minds that some of us think the “I’m a tax payer,” thing is all ferenji talks, as if it’s copyrighted. It is not. It’s only that maybe most members of our society are too timid and too shy to try something they think is reserved for the ferenjis. Don’t ask me how things came to this. We have repeatedly talked about this gentleman who being maltreated in a certain office loudly says, “I’m a taxpayer,” and every one of them had their best laugh of the day.
Wouldn’t you like to see literary works focusing on such important issues where tax payers’ stand strong and tall and demand for their rights to be respected since what keeps going the work forces are the taxes they pay? Wouldn’t you want to see a work force that realizes without the taxes coming in the dinner table of everyone would be even emptier? Wouldn’t you like to see which saves much of the excesses in its overdone tidiness and shyness and there was nothing wrong demanding for their rights to be respected as they’ve fulfilled the responsibilities expected of them? Believe me nothing is out of reach if there is the motivation, the willingness and the perseverance to make changes. And change means standing tall and strong and saying “I’m a taxpayer.”
So, do we need changes in this respect? Yes, we do. That is progress, that is civilization and that is the way things should be!
The Ethiopian Herald June 30/2024