Federal Revenue Alliance (FRA), employees union staged a demonstration here on Tuesday against the freezing of the special pay allowance of the employees of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Addressing the tax employees at the Regional Tax Office (RTO) Rawalpindi, President of FRA Ijaz Iqbal Raja strongly objected to the recent decision of the government to freeze the FBR special pay allowance.
The special pay package has been granted after completion of legal procedure of Internal Job Posting (IJP) under the Human Resource Management Wing of the FBR. The special pay package is directly linked with the performance of the employees and it is different from allowances paid to other government organisations. The double pay package has been granted to the FBR employees taking into account regular performance review by the Board. The process of the IJP include tests, interviews and up to the mark performance of the tax employees.
Senior Vice President of the FRA Rashid Khan was of the view that the special pay package has been granted by the FBR under the World Bank funded Tax Administration Reform Project (TARP). This double pay package was a crucial component of the TARP. This special allowance has nothing to do with the pay/allowances paid by the government as the same is given to the FBR employees from donors' money, he claimed.
The performance based special pay package was part of the overall reforms in the FBR, which enabled the tax machinery to meet the target of Rs 1588 billion in 2010-2011. This special pay package cannot be compared with the allowances paid to other government organisations as the FBR is doing a special job of meeting revenue collection target, he added. The FRA appealed to the President, prime minister, finance minister and FBR Chairman to stop freezing of the special allowance of the FBR employees.