10,000 FBR officials to be transferred

ISLAMABAD: In a massive reshuffle, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has prepared a list of 10,000 officials from grade 1 to 16 who will be transferred in a phased manner.

In the first batch, the Board has transferred around 3,100 workforce mainly from Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from across the country. Now in second phase, the workforce belonging to the Customs Group will be transferred in a massive manner anytime. “We have prepared a list of around 10,000 officials belonging to both IRS and the Customs Group who will be transferred within the next few days,” a top FBR sources told The News on Saturday. The FBR’s core team has asked the chairman to post out all the required staff as early as possible within next few days so they could focus only on generating the desired tax collection target for the current fiscal year.

When the FBR Member Inland Revenue (Policy) and spokesman Dr Hamid Ateeq Sarwar was contacted, he confirmed the Board's decision to transfer all those staff who had served on the same position for last three years. “We have prepared a list of 10,000 staff members who will be transferred within the ongoing month,” he added. The sources said the government has also decided to transfer officers of grade 17 and above but it will not be done on such a massive scale. “The officers of both IRS and Customs Group will be transferred where it is necessary to achieve the highly difficult tax collection target of Rs5,550 billion in the current fiscal year,” said the official. The sources said it would be quite crucial as to what kind of officers would be selected at the top to run the affairs of the tax machinery when it will have an uphill task to achieve revenue growth of over 40 percent in a single year keeping in view the massive shortfall witnessed by the FBR in last fiscal year 2018-19 that has just ended on June 30, 2019. If the FBR did not replace officers with tainted reputation and selects others on the basis of integrity then it will be written on the wall that the FBR will not be able to achieve its target of Rs5,550 billion in the ongoing financial year.

The FBR Chairman Shabbar Zaidi told this correspondent on Friday that the FBR’s reform plan would be publicised next week as they finalise the blueprint of this document. He said the strength of members would be reduced through the reform plan and only line members would be kept within the fold of the tax machinery. The sources said the FBR is making all out efforts to break the established nexus between the businessmen and tax officials. The FBR has so far transferred and posted 3,100 Inland Revenue officials up to grade-16 across the country under massive reshuffling. The FBR has made these transfers in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan and other cities of the country.

Transfers and postings were made of officials of BS-9-14 working in IRS (Karachi station); officials of BS-9-15 (Lahore station); officials (BS-9-15) working in IRS; assistant directors (Audit)(BS-18); senior auditors (BS-16); BS-16 employees working in IRS; BS-16 employees working in IRS (Lahore station) and BS-16 employees working in IRS(Karachi station).