The members of the Income Tax Officers Association along with IT Employees Federation (Uttar Pradesh East) remained away from their duties on Thursday to press on their five points demand pending for approval.
The Federation was agitated that despite of their regular protests, the officials at Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had not even ensured proper infrastructure for the staff like chairs, tables, computers etc.
“Thirty to forty percent of the posts in the IT department has been lying vacant just as the CBDT had not notified Recruitment Rules besides not taking appropriate steps regarding promotions of the existing staff,” claimed general secretary of the ITEF, JP Singh.
Disclosing the grievances of the Staff here during a meeting of the staff on Thursday afternoon, Singh said that 900 posts of assistant commissioners which is more than 2/3 of the sanctioned strength are lying vacant which clearly pointed about seriousness of the CBDT to strengthen the Department, which is one of biggest revenue collector for the Government. He claimed that Assistant commissioners played important role in revenue collection and a big strength of the existing staff is waiting for promotion not for a lone still the bosses sitting in the Centre are not taking the matter seriously. He said that in 2013-14, while announcing re-structuring in the Department, they were told to make the Department for efficient, 20751 new posts will be created but nothing has been done in this regard so far.
Singh further accused the senior officers of creating several new posts for themselves in the head-quarter just as they do no want to leave New Delhi. ``It is strange that we now had a full time IT Director (Infrastructure) at the HQ but still majority of offices had no proper infrastructure for the staff even where we can perform day to day duties”, he asserted.
He claimed that the Department had no shortage of fund when it came to outsourcing of work but whenever they raised demand of infrastructure so that the duties could be performed by regular staff who were more accountable, they were told that cash starved department could not facilitate the same. He said that it seems that a situation has been created before them so that they could not perform their duties and if they go for protest, they would be blamed for not achieving the given target of revenue collection.
It may be mentioned that the entire workforce viz. the employees and the promotee officers, who hold the middle management position, are on the path of agitation. Since September 09 last, a non co-operation move has been made while earlier this month, the staff went on half day token strike.