A unique 'departmental corruption' has surfaced in the Regional Tax Office (RTO), Karachi where over 200 'ghost employees' are found to be enjoying pay and perks. When contacted, Imtiaz Ahmad Barakzai, Chief Commissioner, RTO, Karachi commented: "Around 200 officials have been traced who were not performing their duties but were receiving emoluments from the Government Treasury".
He said this issue was brought to light after cross matching of data of daily attendance sheets with lists of available strength. This action would help the exchequer save millions of rupees, he added. He said the RTO had only three Electronic Software Programmes of Rehmatullah Malik, which were available to consult case law and improve quality of assessment. However, 15 more programmes have been obtained to expedite the process.
He said: "We are trying to flush out the complaints of the non-corporate sector pertaining to indexing of about 50,000 such cases which were not indexed, are being recorded. He said the department is also striving to improve the CVT collection, which is presently not up to the mark. For this purpose, the CVT facilitation centres have been established at different vicinities of the metropolis to increase its collection significantly.
At present there are 27 sub-registrars at Karachi and the department with the help of Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (Pral) has expanded its CVT monitoring by placing an effective mechanism through which Tax Facilitation Centres have been established at 5 locations viz Site, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Malir, Sakhi Hassan and behind Bilawal House. He said Pral would assist the department by managing resources comprising software to capture the data at the time of transfer of property, which would simultaneously be uploaded on the FBR web portal. However, the hardware would be provided by the RTO including furniture and fixtures.
He said the CVT kiosk would facilitate taxpayers in term of verification of National Tax Number (NTN) besides disseminating information to the officers having the same jurisdiction. He was optimistic about the software development, saying that an exact calculation of CVT would be possible through it, which would make the process more viable and transparent after eradicating human role. He added that the level of monitoring would be expanded to all related authorities including DHA, KDA, MDA and LDA.