KARACHI: The Establishment Division has reserved the posts/vacancies of BS-21 & BS-20 for promotion of the officers of Pakistan Customs Service (PCS) as Additional Secretary/ Senior Joint Secretary (BS-21) and Joint Secretary (BS-20) in the Federal Secretariat.

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has asked the BS-20 and BS-19 officers of PCS eligible for promotion to send their consent in the matter to the Board. However, Customs officers did not evince much interest in this offer.

Sources said that this has been a practice for a very long time that Customs officers are not posted as Additional Secretary and Customs officers are given a ‘lollypop’ posting of Senior Joint Secretary at the Federal Secretariat, which is basically a post to dump the officers.

Sources said that Additional Secretaries were usually posted from the District Management Group (DMG). Hence, Customs officers were not interested in this offer.

Sources said that Pakistan Customs was flooded with officers of Grade-18, Grade-19 and Grade-20. In order to accommodate these officers several collectorates and positions were created. It was known that at places where, for example, three officers were needed, the authorities had posted six officers.

It was known that Establishment Division made this promotion officer to drain the officers from Customs to some other office. But, Customs officers are happier at their present positions.

It may be mentioned here that Customs, on the contrary, is extremely short of appraising staff and sepoys. It is to this reason that anti-smuggling has not been able to make an impact.