As many as 1,000 officials of Customs department have been awaiting promotions from Grade 16 to 17 despite passage of one year, as promised by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in his budget 2014-15 speech. A senior official of the Federal Board of Revenue told Business Recorder Tuesday that some quarters were creating hurdles in the promotion of the Superintendents of the department.
"Some Superintendents are retired in the year without getting their promised promotion while the next budget for the fiscal year 2015-16 is to be announced in the coming week," he said. The official complained that some grade-16 employees of secretariat and other departments were promoted as promised by the federal government but the same has been denied to the customs department officials.
He said that if the finance minister cannot get his decisions implemented, then he should consider quitting the job rather making new promises of public and government employees' welfare. He said that the officials in the sales tax and income tax departments are feeling discrimination and some of them have even abandoned doing their job honestly out of depression.
Some officials of the sales tax departments had also moved Lahore High Court to repatriate the officials from the income tax and sales tax department to their parent department and succeeded in getting the verdict in their favour but it is yet to be implemented, he said. He said that two separate committees were also constituted following orders of the court to look into the matter but yet nothing concrete is done on it. He urged the prime minister and president to look into the matter and promote all grade-16 officers into grade-17 prior to announcement of the next budget.