LAHORE

National kitty suffers and taxpayers continue to face problems in filing of returns as the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has paralysed its revenue automation system while its own newly-developed online system failed to deliver properly.
The taxpayers and even the banks have expressed concerns over the continuous difficulties on the FBR’s conduct that removed experienced staff recruited by the Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd (PRAL), a board’s subordinate body.
Sources in the FBR told that the company removed many PRAL employees who were working in the company for last 10 to 18 years on contractual basis. They submitted applications at Lahore and Islamabad High Courts for their regularisation and allegedly malafide actions of the management. The courts issued stay orders but the company violated them and terminated on 30th June 2015 all staff that got stay from the courts.
When contacted the CEO PRAL Madam Raana Ahmad said that PRAL was a private company and its employees were contractual. Though the courts have ordered status-quo on their issues but the company did nothing wrong. Neither the contracts were renewed nor were the employees terminated from service. On expiry of their contracts on 30th June they stood removed automatically, she said. The renewal of contracts could be contempt of court otherwise, the CEO Raana asserted.
While one of the PRAL employees who also got stay order conditioning anonymity said that they were on stay orders since 2012 and the company neither terminated their services nor renewed their contracts. But after the incumbent CEO Raana took charge of the company, the employees were removed and their salaries stopped. It was the contempt of court order, he asserted. The current management of the PRAL, led by Madam Raana Ahmed (Acting CEO) and Ahmed Nawaz GMD has been practicing injustice in the company by mentally torturing the employees, he said. The productivity of the company has been down, he claimed.
The acting CEO of PRAL is only focused on the IRIS project. They have no interest in the rest of the tens of successful projects being developed and implemented by PRAL in the past. Similarly, their lack of interest in commercial projects (PRA, SRB, KPK) has resulted in the dissatisfaction of the clients. Due to this lack of interest, there is no major work being done on those projects and therefore the productivity of PRAL has been reduced dramatically.
Some other employees sacked by the PRAL, said that they think that the FBR Officers have been misguided and misled by the new management of PRAL, due to which injustice has been practiced, they held. They said that the ruling PML-N should take cognizance of the severe matter that was damaging tax collection mechanism in the country.
Talking some of the key injustices practiced by the PRAL management, in the name of reviving the company, he said, the number of employees was reduced; the intermediaries were facing severe problems who file tax returns of many people. The need was to increase number of people at call centers to facilitate tax payers but the position is vice versa, he held. Talking about the terminated employees, he said, they were supporting FBR, Sindh Revenue Board, Punjab and KP Revenue Authorities and National as well as State Bank of Pakistan. He said that on the odd attitude of the management the trend of resignations was on the rise.
Hameed Baloch, a senior lawyer of Lahore Tax Bar Association, said that the FBR has collapsed its own tax collection system by destabilising its brainchild PRAL. The Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), introduced last year for income tax returns filing faced problems due to the lack of care from the support side, which resulted in the failure of the revenue collection, Baloch held.
Talking about NTN getting, he said, it takes weeks that was a 72 hour job. He said that the tax helpline was useless and the recovery was badly affected. He said that the FBR was facing severe problems and the shortage of technical staff was one of them.
He said that the PRAL had developed a tax return friendly system but its employees were being sacked even after knowing their performance. He said that the government should take notice of this situation so that the woes of the tax payers could be reduced.