Zakat....to save or not to save...?

Zakat is the mandatory share of the poor in our wealth according to the Islamic law. In Pakistan every year on the first of ramadan zakat is deducted by the government of Pakistan from most of the Banking sector.This method of collection of zakat was introduced by the military led dictatorial regime of Gen Zia in the mid-eighties...when I was growing up....and somebody(I usually blame the HM's Admiralty for my education but even I know that they are very busy people having to read from those outdated charts and maps) thought it was time to teach me that just saving a piggy is not enough....you got to learn to milk the cow.I was a born saver...I loved to save every rupee I get it was in my blood...must have been in the tonics they gave me or my mother at my birth...because both my parents were spenders....not me no no no...never was ...never will be...very very possessive...
So when this zakat system was introduced everybody got a shock...many questions were raised the bankers were enraged because they already knew how to milk the cow...and were not prepared to share the milk with the military..who they believed were already taking the milk in the form of government taxes,bhatta's(protection money) and the foreign Aid.
I am not aware of how and when the Bankers and Zia regime reached a compromise but this I know for sure that the government gave exemptions to certain sects and groups from the mandatory deduction of zakat from saving accounts and deposits...in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The devoted muslims who were used to paying zakat to the known poor in their surroundings were exasperated for about a year or so...but the condition of the poor did not improve so they moved their funds and savings to the cows from the piggy...a saving account in a bank become a definite NO NO....for saving ...only for the money transactions...

As a matter of fact this helped both the government and the people of Pakistan....for the successive governments the confidence in Bankers grew so much that they privatized the Nationalized banking sector....which is now moving rapidly towards corporatization...please don't confuse it to the government owned corporations....
Despite having large corporate clients with huge accounts some bankers still care about the small account holders and are very keen on helping them to save the zakat...before the first of ramadan... on whatever small amounts of money they have in their saving accounts....which is quite extra-ordinary...