KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) may face dire consequences in connection with the acute shortage of “professional” man-power and machinery in its wing of Pakistan Customs.
In this regard, when the Customs Today conducted a survey in order to evaluate the bench-strength of Pakistan Customs Services (PCS), it was surprised to find out that “professional” officials have become extinct from the department by the passage of time leaving the department into immense difficulties in upcoming future in connection with the experienced, technical and professional staffers, as they are going to retire from their services in coming 2 to 3years.
During the survey, it was found that the core functions of the departments at the level of all field formation Collectorates are being suffered badly due to shortage of not only man-power but the professionals. It was also found that most of the appraisers, principal appraisers and examining officers have been recruited in the Customs Department with the degree of bachelors and masters in Arts while the officials having technical degrees in mechanics and other faculties have been retired from the services in great numbers.
It may be worth mentioning here that the last recruitment in the Pakistan Customs Services (PCS)-FBR at the ministerial and clerical rank from Grade-1 to Grade-14 was conducted in the year 1994. Not even a single recruitment is being made at Grade-1 to above during the period of 21years, although the commissioned officers at Grade-17 are being appointed in the Customs services on regular intervals.
When Customs Today took view point of Customs officers of (Grade-20), they almost said the same about current situation of Pakistan Customs. The officer of (Grade-20) Collector, Muhammad Saleem said that the operational difficulties are being increased with every passing day in the Collectorate due to acute shortage of skilled and competent officials at appraising and examination level.
“Every coming day is becoming difficult for the field formation, as 59 officials including appraisers and examining officers are being retired in the current year, while the number of retired officials would increase with the passage of time”, he asserted.
Collector Muhammad Saleem further said that the shortage of man-power is a main issue which is affecting the performance of the Collectorate, as the Collectorate is striving hard to strengthen tax detecting sections including Post Release Verification (PRV) Cell and Research and Development (R&D) Section.
The Collector further hinted that if the prevailing issue regarding the shortage of skilled man-power is not redressed immediately, then the working scenario of Pakistan Customs would become difficult.
Sharing information, Collector Muhammad Saleem said that the Collectorate has recently 32 appraisers altogether out of which only two appraisers possess graduation degree in Science and two appraisers have engineering degree while remaining 28 appraisers have simple bachelor degrees in faculty of Arts.
“Highly professional individuals are needed to handle sophisticated machinery, as the competent officials are to be retired from the services in near future”, he maintained.
