KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has directed the Pakistan Customs officers to ensure timely presence in their relevant departments. For this purpose, 9.30am sharp would be the arrival time while a grace time of 10 minutes will be given.
Moreover, all the heads concerned have also been directed to send their attendance reports latest by 9:45 a.m to the FBR head quarters.
These orders were issued few days back and from February 27 implementation of the directives has started and daily attendance reports from the offices of the Customs departments from all over the country is being sent on daily basis.
However, the heads concerned of different departments in general and of Appraisement in particular are really in a fix as how to manage their daily routine as they, themselves come to their offices not before 10.30 a.m while, thousands of Customs officers from grade 17 and above are also in a fix as how to manage their daily routine following the orders of the FBR.
Worst affected were the officers belonging to the appraisement departments and residing in major cities particularly in Karachi.
Talking to Customs Today, many Customs people said that it had become impossible for them to meet the needs of their families. They further said that due to the shortage of staff the office work needs more time and they had to do late sittings in their offices.
They further argued that late comings is not their habits, rather there are many other sideline problem which force them to reach their office a bit late citing the example of traffic jams in the morning hours on the streets of Karachi as one of the major reasons of coming late.
Other major reasons for getting late include ‘Dharnas (Sitting on one pretext or the other, by political parties and civil societies), strikes and the over one and a half hour drive if a person is residing in the District west or Central and had to reach his office at Port Qasim etc, they further added.
This latest order has irked the senior officers who are sitting late in the evenings in their offices to cope up with the office matters. One of the officers said that if “we started leaving our offices on the scheduled timings then half of the work would be left unattended due to the shortage of the staff and the people would face acute problems.”
