Excise Dept employees seek allowance on PMS/PCS pattern

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Excise and Taxation employees have sought executive allowance and upgrading on the analogy of the Provincial Civil Service (PCS) and Provincial Management Service (PMS) cadre officers in the province.

They have also demanded a proper mechanism for promotion, capacity building and other career progression related measures by the provincial government. President of the Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department Welfare Association, Sufian Haqqani, and its general secretary, Zahid Iqbal, through a communication to Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, who is also holding the portfolio of the department, informed that Excise and Taxation employees were discriminated against and denied allowance on the analogy of PCS/PMS Officers, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority (KPRA), police Department and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The employees in their letter to the chief minister said that the KPRA was under the Excise, Taxation and Narcotics control and its employees receives allowances in addition to their salaries. A grade-20 officer in KPRA is getting an allowance of Rs150,000, grade-19, is getting Rs100,000, grade-18, Rs70,000 and grade-17 officers are receiving Rs45,000.

They added that the Excise Taxation Officer (ETO) go through the same process of induction and training as PMS Officers, but the ETOs are deprived of the executive allowances the PMS Officers are receiving in addition to their salaries. A grade-20 PMS/PCS officer receives over Rs100,000, grade-19, Rs88,000, grade-18, Rs58,500 and grade-17 PMS/PCS officer get Rs45,000 executive allowance in addition to his/her salary, they further said. The association leaders maintained that the officers recruited through various combined competitive examination conducted by the Public Service Commission (PSC), of Secretariat Service cadre were merged to Provincial Management Service (PMS) and ETOs remained attached to Excise Department only.

The PMS Officers have unlimited opportunities of progression and grooming while the ETOs remained confined to the attached department, they regretted. In order to devise a workable mechanism of promotion and vertical mobility a process initiated in year 2010 was supposed to be implemented long ago. However, so far no particle steps have been taken in this regard. After completion of initial restructuring process, the task of the framing of service rules was initiated. However, the said process was inordinately delayed. The entire process was aimed at opening avenues of promotion for Excise, Department employees, but during the course of the process, more ironically, four posts from the restructured posts of Director General (DG), Director Admin (DA), Deputy Director Litigation (DD Litigation) and Deputy Director Admin (DDA) were included in scheduled posts, thereby blocking the prospects of elevation of Excise Department employees forever.

The association leaders pointed out that “a very speaking case in the context is of the promotion of deputy director, Ahmad Shah, who had joined the department as ETO decades ago in BPS-17. He was promoted to Deputy Director (BPS-18) worked in that capacity for more than a decade until he moved Court which ordered his further promotion. However, the court order was not implemented and the officer got the age of superannuation. Even the officer was assured on March 1, 2011, that his case along with others for promotion to the director (BPS-19) would be considered as soon as service rules for the newly created/ upgraded posts are finalized. The rules were finalized about two years after his retirement and still the ETOs and other officers have no opening for promotion. Similarly, there is no in-service training programme for the staff that have to deal with a complicated tax regime with raw handedly and without proper training and capacity building. They requested the chief minister to favourably consider their case and direct officials concerned to materialise the restructuring plan and en-carder ETOs (BPS-17) and above in the PMS.