E&T requests for more office space

Excise and Taxation Dept plans to make a written request to the Board of Revenue.

LAHORE: The Excise and Taxation (E&T) Department plans to make a written request to the Board of Revenue to hand over the possession of the buildings of Anti-Corruption and Revenue Departments adjacent to its own building in the Faridkot House.

Imran Aslam, the E&T officer (administration), told The Express Tribune that after obtaining possession of the buildings the department would have enough space to accommodate the increasing number of visitors.

Imran said that more than a thousand people frequented the office everyday but the space was not sufficient to accommodate them. “People have been complaining about congestion. We cannot deal with everyone’s query in this office,” he added.

In a bid to lessen the load on Faridkot House branch, Aslam said, the E&T Department rented space in DHA and Model Town in 2009 so that the visitors from these areas could get the services there. He added that the number of people visiting the Faridkot House branch had kept on increasing.

A senior E&T Department official said that it was not the first time the department would be submitting such a request. He said that a similar proposal was submitted in November 2008 by the then E&T secretary, Hassan Nawaz Tarar. He claimed that the then chief secretary (CS), Javed Mehmood, had issued directives to the departments concerned to vacate the buildings.

According to the 2008 plan, the Property Tax, Professional Tax and Excise branches were to be moved to the Anti-Corruption and Revenue Departments’ buildings.

He said that the request sent to the CS stated that there was an immediate need to house the three branches of the E&T Department in the city – in Shadman, Baghbanpura and in Faridkot House – to one building.

The request also mentioned, he said, that by acquiring the Anti-Corruption Department and Revenue Department buildings the E&T would save up to Rs3.5 million that it paid in rents every year.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2010.