The annual meeting of the board of directors of Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (Pral), a technical arm of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), would be convened on August 16 for approval of its annual budget during 2008-09.
Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that the meeting might not take up most important issues of ghost employees, administrative violations and findings of audit and HR committees before new FBR Chairman Ahmed Waqar.
The committees have been assigned to investigate the issues of financial records of audits/accounts and existence of ghost employees within the organisation. It seemed the FBR management or Pral had not taken any action on the recommendations of the Audit and HR committees to improve the situation.
The agenda of the meeting included regularisation of senior Pral officials instead of discussing any sensitive matter relating to audit or Human Resource Management (HRM). The board of directors meeting on August 16 would review performance, compensation and confirmation of services of chief executives and general managers of Pral.
The meeting would also take up issue of magnetisation policy of vehicles; approval of financial accounts for June 30, 2006 and June 30, 2007; write off of Rs 40,297,915 for year ended June 30, 2006 and review/approval of revised sanctioned positions.
The HR committee headed by former member HRM had submitted a comprehensive report to the tax authorities in 2008. The report should be studied by the new FBR chairman to have an updated close eye before chairing board of directors' annual meeting.
The report had recommended to the FBR to revise and update service rules for the Pral employees. The board should introduce transparency in recruitment through testing of new recruits at all levels. There is a need to set up a performance evaluation system for employees; streamline the data relating to employees records; conduct field visits to determine the actual number of employees, and the FBR should appoint an HR head of the level of GM reporting directly to the chief executive.
According to HR committee report, the former HRM member paid surprise visits to regional offices of Pral. A surprise visit was undertaken to Pral office in F-6/2 where most of the files are maintained. Discussions were held with three HR officers posted there and a number of files were physically checked. All the files checked revealed violation of rules and lack of transparency in the recruitment process.
The HR committee report said the service rules were framed in 1998 and updated only once in 2001. The rules and procedures have since become redundant subsequent to a number of policies formulated from time to time and have never been integrated as one authentic document providing the necessary policy guidelines and directions. Special emphasis should be given to defining the criteria for recruitment and selection to make the process transparent.
The report claimed that the process of granting increments and promotions was also not transparent. The criteria used by the Pral board of management is not known to any one. It is worth mentioning that the board had made it mandatory for Pral to take prior approval of the board-in-council before signing any contract/agreement with other organisations. This decision was taken in the last meeting chaired by the former FBR chairman M. Abdullah Yusuf.
Every contract made by Pral requires prior approval for effective monitoring of the organisation, sources said. The meeting on August 16 would also discuss reconciliation report of Pral's receivables with the National Highway Authority (NHA). Pral had closed automated toll collection system at the Motorway project as the software has many loopholes. The department had formally informed the National Highway Authority (NHA) about the closure of the Pral has been providing technology services for the Automated Toll Collection System to the NHA since 1997.