ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has started working on a plan on rightsizing the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) to get rid of ghost employees.

Sources told Business Recorder that the FBR will terminate the services of the ghost employees working in the PRAL.

The unnecessary over-staffing of the employees is also another challenges for the concerned authorities.

There are a number of old employees working in the PRAL, who are drawing salaries but doing no work or have no knowledge of new IT regime.

The PRAL needs fresh induction with experts having knowledge of the latest technology and expertise.

For instance, data entry operators are now not required under the modern IT regime.

At Karachi airport, 34 officers of the PRAL are working as data entry operators, which are not doing any job due to change in technology and advancements.

In some bank, there are PRAL employees still working as data operators for filling PSIDs slips.

Now people are filing forms electronically from their homes using the FBR website.

The purpose of the whole exercise is to improve the efficiency of the PRAL.

There is a need to get rid of the ghost employees earning salaries but doing nothing.

The government wants to induct fresh software developers, programme developers and other experts for smooth functioning of the organisation.

The PRAL also needs system security officers for network security of the FBR system to avert cyber-attacks.

The PRAL also needs experts of hardware maintenance and systems for effectively checking cyber-attacks on the FBR system.

The FBR also wanted to improve the pay structure of the PRAL existing employees. The PRAL employees are getting low salaries as compared to actual market-based salaries.

If the PRAL experts will not get market-based salaries they would switch to other private organisations, they added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021