KARACHI: None of the Appraisers are interested in the promotion to the post of Principal Appraiser (PA) as not a single ACR was submitted in response to the FBR’s letter, which requested submission of ACR’s of 40 Appraisers short-listed for the post of Principal Appraiser.
It may be mentioned here that Appraisers had not been promoted to Principal Appraisers for the last five years. The list of 40 appraisers issued by FBR includes several who were either dead, retired, abroad or absent from service since over a decade.
It seems that Admin Wing of FBR did not do any sort of homework while preparing the list of 40 appraisers shortlisted for promotion. Similarly, the list of BS-16 officials whose performance allowance was suspended includes many officials who were not in service any more. Besides, the notification of suspending the performance allowance by the Admin Wing FBR was out of jurisdiction.
Member Admin Shahid Jatoi is considered to be an honest officer, but he is not cooperative and friendly to the officials and officers, which is resulting in severe technical and administrative problems in Customs group in particular.
He post of Principal Appraiser is no more a lucrative position and Appraisers are not willing to become PAs. Similarly, there has been three notifications in the last five years for the promotion of PAs for the post of Assistant Collector, but none of the PAs are willing to be promoted as Assistant Collector as this would result in their ‘economic loss’.
The appraisers and principal appraisers are working on these positions for decades and filling their own pockets on the cost of government revenue. Principal Appraiser as per the Act was a very important position and the responsibility of doing the consignments ‘out of charge’ rested with PA. But, after the PaCCS, the work of PA in examination as well as assessment was ended, which resulted in revenue loss and corruption of past 90-day data. Principal Appraiser seems to be a redundant position now.
Moreover, around 50 percent of the appraisers in Pakistan Customs spent their carriers in Examination; these officials are ill-experienced which is causing huge loss to the national exchequer as certain importers and clearing agents are aware of their weakness and take full advantage of this situation.
The list of 40 appraisers include Ahmed Nawaz Khan, Mohammad Mooosa (he is in UK for the last 15 years), Tariq Rehman has passed away, S.M Wasim Kazmi, Abdul Shakoor, Ghulam Haider Pirwani, M. Anjum Khan, Munir Brohi, Ghulam Mohammad Isran, Mohammad yusuf Baig retiring in November, Syed Zameer Akram, Khalid hussain Awan, S. Shahid Murad, ZafarImran, Junaid Malik, Tariq Aziz Ahmed, Tariq Mehmood is absent without information for years, Asif Khan, Ch. Moazzam Ali, Ms. Ishrat Ayaz, Ali Akbar, Abdul Rashid, hamood-ur-Rehman, Saif-ur-rehman, Aziz Sarwar, noor alam Durrani, Javed Iqbal, Adnan Amin Malik, Fida Hussain is in UK since long, Amir Ahmed, Jamshed Cheema, Farhan Siddiqui is in USA since long, Fayyaz Ahmed is retiring in November, Zulfiqar who is not a senior official, M. Nazir Khan, Tariq Ahmed Mesar, syed Masoom Raza, Ashraf Bhatti and Tahir Khan.
According to data available with Customnews.pk, the positions of PA lying vacant include one in the office of Chief Collector Customs North, 2 at Directorate General Customs Valuation Karachi, one at IOCO Karachi, 2 at Internal Audit Karachi, 2 PAs are required at PCA Islamabad, one at Training & Research Karachi, 5 PAs are working at Transit Trade Karachi while there is no sanctioned PA position, Customs Valuation Lahore is short of 2 PAs, there is one extra PA at IOCO Lahore, ICOCO South Karachi is short of 4 PAs, 3 PAs required at Internal Audit Karachi and 4 at Internal Audit Lahore, PCA Karachi is short of 2 PAs and PCA Lahore is short of one PA, MCC Appraisement East is working with 8 PAs against 12 sanctioned posts.
Moreover, MCC Appraisement West and Appraisement Lahore have 7 extra PAs each, MCC Port Qasim has 9 PAs against 5 sanctioned posts while MCC Exports Port Qasim has 3 PAs while there is no sanctioned post for PA. Preventive Karachi has one extra PA, Preventive Lahore has a surplus of 2 PAs and MCC Multan has 2 PAs against one sanctioned post.
MCC Faisalabad is short of 3, MCC Gwadar is short of one, MCC Hyderabad is short of one and MCC Sialkot is short of 2 Principal Appraisers.