Times change: Tax Dept proposes ‘new’ recruitment process

The Public Service Commission, it says, will take too long.

LAHORE:

The Excise and Taxation (E&T) Department is likely to recruit 132 valuation and assessment assistant directors for the Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) through the National Testing Service (NTS). The Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC), which would ordinarily recruit the officers at the provincial level, will not be referred to.

An official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the department had submitted a summary to the chief minister for approval of the proposal.

The Punjab government had announced the establishment of the PRA within the fiscal year. The PRA was to streamline revenue collection and implement tax reforms. It is scheduled to be functioning from July 2012. In the first phase, it would assess and collect taxes (this has been the prime work of the E&T Department).

The E&T Department had been holding back on recruiting 132 excise inspectors for the past two years. Now those posts have been changed into assistant directors of the PRA.

In its proposal, the department has urged the government to recruit the assistant directors immediately. The PPSC, it claims, would take a long time to recruit the 132 officers. The department has put forward the NTS for the recruitment process.

The recruits, according to the proposal, should have an MBA, an LLB and a diploma in tax laws and should be offered market pays with usual perks and privileges.

Anwer Rasheed, the director general of the E&T department, said recruitment through NTS was just a proposal.

The competent authority would decide the method for recruitment according to the existing rules and regulations, he said. The authority would be an independent body.

Professor Shabbir Ahmed Chaudhry, who runs an academy that prepares candidates to sit for the PPSC entrance exam, said PPSC had the expertise for such a search. He said there was no need to make recruitments through another body. The NTS examinations, largely based on English and mathematics questions, would be suitable for academic admissions but not for recruitment, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2012.