Mohali
26 March 2017
Kulbir Singh Kalsi
The centre Government has imposed 15% service tax on the services related with the higher education for the college students. Now education related services like hostel accommodation, mess, transport and other facilities would be subjected to service tax which will increase the burden on the students. Punjab Unaided Colleges Association (PUCA) has written to the Union Finance Minister, Sh. Arun Jaitley to exempt the education sector from such types of service tax.
Dr. Anshu Kataria, President, PUCA said that we need to make education affordable to all the strata of the society and such service tax would increase the burden to the tune of Rs. 2000-8000 per student per year.
CA Manmohan Garg, Treasurer, PUCA said that if we want to educate our youth then we should come out with more scholarship schemes and try to help out students with more benefits in higher technical education.
Mr. Amit Sharma, Vice President, PUCA said that in India, most of the technical and higher education colleges are in the periphery of major towns and students avail transport or hostel services to access the education. But such service tax on hostel and transport services would put additional burden on the students which will affect the students belonging to middle and lower income group of the society.
Dr. Anshu Kataria further added that already because of various factors many of the colleges are facing severe financial crisis and we request the Government to bail out the education sector as well as help out the students to complete their education with affordable fees structures without increasing the cost on these services.
