FBR to fill 3,000 vacancies

ISLAMABAD: After lifting of ban on recruitment into public sector by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to fill 3,000 vacant posts in both Inland Revenue Service (IRS) and Customs department through National Testing Service (NTS) and Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC).
From grade 1 to 15, the vacancies will be filled through NTS while for posts of grade 16 and 17, the FPSC will undertake the process to fill the posts.
“On the written request of Chairman FBR, Tariq Bajwa, the Establishment Division has approved rules for recruiting 3005 posts falling vacant into tax machinery,” official documents available with The News disclosed on Friday.
The FBR chairman’s communication states that in order to keep the process of recruitment transparent and merit-based, the Establishment Division is requested to exempt FBR from mechanism and monitoring committee constituted by the ED vide their O.M. No F.53/1/2008 SP dated 16-1-2015. The Establishment Division also exempted the FBR from the condition of NOC required to be obtained from the Management Service Wing (MS Wing) to avoid the adjustment of official available in the surplus pool. The FBR chairman argued that the field job of revenue collection unit was technical, tough and challenging; therefore, the vacancies available in the field offices of FBR demand young, energetic and committed staff.
As the FBR’s Board in Council has decided to engage the experienced testing firm i.e. M/S NTS to conduct the whole recruitment exercise including written, physical test, and interview, the FBR may be allowed to finalise Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with NTS accordingly.
Recruitment against the posts from BS-1 to BS-10 shall strictly be made on the basis of written/physical test meaning thereby that the candidates shall not be interviewed.
For the posts from BS-10 to BS-15, 90 percent weightage will be given to written/physical test and only 10 percent weightage to the interviews so that the discretionary factors could be minimised for keeping the process merit-based and transparent.
There will be 1,805 vacancies in IRS, 1,111 in Customs Department and FBR’s headquarters’ posts will be 90 in number.
Total number of posts from grade 1-15 will be 2,915 for all cadres including 1,804 for IRS and 1,111 for Customs.
All posts for the FBR headquarters shall be filled on all Pakistan basis strictly following the merit and provincial/regional quota.
On Customs side, the FBR sources said that no recruitments were made since 1996. Out of the total staff’s strength of 9,000, there were 22 percent posts vacant causing huge revenue losses in terms of rampant smuggling and under invoicing.
Of total 1,250 inspectors in Customs department, 85 percent are those who got promoted from lower ranks. Under the new policy, the FBR has enhanced qualification requirement for recruiting inspectors from Intermediate to BA/BSc.
On IRS side, the official said that the FBR sought applications for 176 inspectors through FPSC for grade 16 and got 65,000 applications that indicate level of unemployment as well as reputation of FBR for having luxurious and attractive position in our social fabric because after police, the FBR is the most prominent as far as corrupt practices are concerned.