Mangaluru: Alleging that Goods and Service Tax (GST) department has been harassing fishmeal and oil manufacturers to pay tax from 2017, All India Fishmeal and Oil Manufacturers and Merchants Association announced that they will go on an indefinite strike and stop functioning from August 1.

Association president Anand Kunder told reporters here on Wednesday that fish meal was exempt/ nil rate from the beginning under the repealed central excise and VAT laws, which the industry believed was not been disturbed by the GST regime. “However, Government of India has issued a circular stating that fish meal industries also should pay GST of five percent with effect from July 1, 2017. As we thought fishmeal industries are exempted GST, we did not collect any tax from the fishermen when they supplied fish to us. Hence, we are not in a position to pay GST to the government from 2017. When we informed this to the officials, they threatened us of dire consequences and treat us like criminals ”, he lamented.

Association leader and former minister Pramod Madhwaraj said, “ if the government had informed us that fishmeal industries are not exempted from paying GST, we would have collected tax from the fishermen, but, now the GST department is asking us to pay tax pending from 2017. This has adversely affected the business and now we are not in a position to pay for the fish purchases from the fishermen, which is their livelihood. We are not even in the position to pay salary to our employees,” he said adding that staging protest is inevitable to us and that they will withdraw protest only after government takes appropriate remedial steps in this regard.

Association president Khader H K and members like M K Balaraj, U N Abdul Razaq among others were present.