The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has fined 87 employees including senior tax officials for placing files/record near windows of their offices, which gave the impression that FBR is still doing its work manually.
Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that the seven days' salary has been deducted from all those FBR employees who placed official files in their windows, giving an ugly look to the FBR House, Islamabad. A notification for enforcement of the decision has already been issued.
According to notification, these officers have failed to comply with the on-going exercise of weeding out old tax record. Sources said that the accused officers have placed files in windows from where visitors could see that manual work is still going at the reformed CBR.
It seems that the CBR wants to give false impression to the visitors that every thing is automated under the Tax Administration Reform Program (TARP). Most of these officers were of the view that the decision of salary deduction would not improve discipline, but it has demoralised the workforce. These employees usually come early in the morning and work till late night on daily basis.
The employees stated that such actions by the administration would only hurt the reform program, which could not be implemented without the contribution of tax officials.
Most of the employees are shocked over this punishment, claiming that even the "E-Dox" system is yet not properly linked with the field formations. "E-Dox" is a system to computerise files under the paperless environment. It is shocking to note that reaction of these victims is so sever that they are planning to go on strike against the FBI's action.
It is not clear that the FBR has committed with the World Bank (WB) to change the mindset of tax officers through proper compensation packages, rewards and double salaries, eradicating corruption from the agency. Contrarily this punishment is against the spirit of reform agenda. The employees have requested the FBR chairman to withdraw this decision.