KARACHI: The Establishment Division has advised the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to submit a summary to the Finance Division so that the salaries of BS-16 officers who are to be promoted in Grade-17 could be upgraded.
Establishment Division noted that grant of higher pay scales being financial matter exclusively pertains to Finance Division therefore FBR should draw an analogy from grant of higher pay sales as has been done in case of the Superintendents of Ministerial cadre by the Finance Division who have been granted BS-17 but have not been placed in region BS-17.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in a summary forwarded maintained that there is no legal anomaly in the proposed up-gradation of senior BPS-16 officers of Customs into BPS-17 adding that all the concerns had already been addressed.
FBR noted that post of Principal Appraiser, Superintendent Preventive and Superintendent Customs fall in BPS-16, the two sub-ordinate tiers were upgraded in BS-16, hence the middle tiers have been declared as dying tiers/posts.
The proposed upgradation of BS-16 officers was without any change in job-description and their upgradation will not affect the sphere of duty of the Assistant Collector because Assistant Collector belongs to Pakistan Customs Service while the BS-16 officers belong to Departmental Cadre of Customs. Even after upgradation to BS-17 they being subordinate cadre will report to Assistant Collector.
It may be mentioned here that Senior Vice President of all Pakistan Customs Appraisers Association Shafiullah and Appraising Officer Rashid Khanzada have been instrumental in pursuing the case of upgradation of senior BS-16 officers in BS-17.
The above mentioned officers were of the view that placing all senior and junior officers in BS-16 had created an hierarchical as well as administrative issue and upgrading of Principal Appraisers and Superintends in BS-17 was direly needed.