Problems being faced by the staffside in the field formations of CBIC

 

ALL INDIA ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL EXCISE

GAZETTED EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

Patron                                                                   Chief Patron                                                               Patron

A. Venkatesh                                                           Ravi Malik                                                        C. S. Sharma

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M. Loganathan                           Flat No. 6, SE 11, Shastri Nagar, Ghaziabad                           Harpal Singh

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Vice Presidents: B C Khatik, V Pagare  (Central) Diwakar Sahai, Sanjoy Gupta (East) Ashish Vajpayee, Amadul Islam (North) G Srinivas Reddy, P Ravichandran (South) R Keny, J B Parmar (West) Joint Secretaries: S P Pandey, T J Manojumon (Central) Subrata Adhikari, SiddharthTewari (East) Ramkesh Meena, S Sahai (West) Atul Kumar, R B Sahu (North) Bhoopesh, R V Raghunandan (South); All India Coordinator: B L Meena Office Secretary: B C Gupta Treasuer: M Kumar Organising Secretary: M Bajpai Liaison Secretary:  N S Maheshwari North Zone Coordinator: Prabhakar Sharma Legal Coordinator: S Sabarwal Vigilance Coordinator: R K Singh South Zone Cordinator: U Sharma

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Ref. No. 160/AIB/G/22                                                                                Dt. 26.12.22

To,                                                    

Sh. Vivek Johri,

Chairman, CBIC,

North Block, New Delhi.

Sub: Problems being faced by the staffside in the field formations of  CBIC.

Sir,

            The AIACEGEO a welcomes step for formation of a committee to look into the workload being handled by the Superintendents, a backbone of this department. Needless to say that the Superintendents have been assigned task of Range Officer besides various functional work at Divisional level, Commissionerate level and zonal level. Besides their said work, the Superintendents are being asked to draft the OIO’s of the senior officers in the garb of assistance work. The AIACEGEO, accordingly, wishes to submit some points for kind attention of your goodself as below-

2. The Superintendents are handling work of Dashboard task, PV, amendments, cancellation of GSTIN, issue Reg 17, DRC 04/05, verification of DRC 03, DRC 01A, downloading and viewing of data, verification data of transmitted by DGARM under different series, scrutiny of returns, audit query/observation, TRAN 1 verifications, case of fake invoicing and verification thereof, drafting and issuance of SCN & letters to the taxpayers, adjudication work of own competency as well drafting of OIOs of senior officers, verification of refund claims,  many periodical and non-periodical reports, returns (which are time consuming), recovery of arrears  besides various anti-evasion functions etc. etc. All these are done with the slow internet connectivity, technical hurdles of back end application like slowness, login issue, auto logoff session, inefficacy of real time transmission of electronic orders to GSTN and CBIC backend application and poor/absence of infrastructure like office space, shortage/old/obsolete electronic hardwares including scanners etc. Further, the latest electronic hardwares/laptops etc. which are being supplied by DG (Systems) are mostly being kept at higher officers’ level and their old and obsolete hardwares are being supplied to the lower officers especially Range Officers/ Superintendents. Further, the various reports which can be accessed and downloaded at higher formations are also asked for submission by the Range Officers, which took lot of time due to said technical adversaries. Despite of all these problems, the Range Officers are doing the best not only with the available infrastructure but are also forced to use their personal digital assets to complete the task. And this all is being done with the acute shortage of due manpower. These issues need urgent attention.

3. The sanctioned manpower strength in various field formations, Divisions, Commissionerates and Zones is either pre GST level (which was already acutely short) or has been reduced despite of the fact that in the GST era workload has been increased manifold and in some ranges the workload has been reached to the lacs of the taxpayers. Despite of it, the most of the zones have much less working strength as compared to sanctioned strength. For example, in UP Zone, the working strength is hardly about 50% of the sanctioned strength and human resources management of the administration is also very poor resulting into multiple charges of Ranges to Range Officers besides charges of Division office and Headquarters office too. It has been seen that despite of shortage of the Superintendents, the percentage of officers deployment in Hdqrs level is much higher than in field formations whereas actual revenue work is at field formations/Range Office. The Headquarters office have merely monitoring and administrative work which can be easily get handled with ministerial staff and a few Inspectors and Superintendents. As a result, the Range Officers are getting heavily over-burdened due to multiple charges of ranges & other charges of Divisions/Headquarters which in general is 3 to 14 charges per Superintendent and this situation is further worsened with those Range Officers who are also attending the work of CPC. Such a huge workload is being handled by the Superintendents/Range Officers solely as shortage of the Inspectors and Ministerial staff is also at the alarming level. Due to such heavy workload and inspite of dedicated, honest and sincere efforts of the Range Officers/Superintendents, the functional lapses/mistakes cannot be ruled out. Under these circumstances, the issue needs urgent attention. Till the situation is not eased out, the lapses/mistakes (if any happens) shall not amount to the Superintendent/Range Officer rather it must be the attributed to the Senior Officers/Administration and responsibility should laid on the Senior Officers/Administration who have burdened/overburdened the Superintendents/Range Officers.

3. The target of the Saadhit has been fixed mainly for Range level and Divisional level with the acute shortage of the staff at these formations as senior officers are engaging many officers with them for monitoring thereof. The Range Officers and officers at Divisional level are working hard to achieve the target foregoing their leaves. But despite of it, these officers are being pressurized to achieve the target by any way. Such situation may lead to some lapses too. Thus, AIACEGEO requests to sensitize the Senior officers not to put undue pressure on the Superintendents.

4. Under the circumstances, the applications for VRS are on regular increase. Though the administration may give several arguments for its justification but the AIACEGEO feels that it is high time to introspect why the experienced officers and backbone of this esteem organization are forced to leave by opting VRS after spending lot of time and energy with the department. This is also happening due to grime situation of careers progression. For instance, in UP Zone, no DPC since last six years happened for the promotion from Inspector to Superintendent. This example is just an iceberg of the alarming situation and mental distress and agony of the field officers of our organization. The DPCs for the post of Asstt. Commissioner are also never happening on due time. The AIACEGEO very humbly raises this issue for wholesome analysis of the situation to take corrective steps before the situation becomes unrepairable.   

5. The AIACEGEO further requests that like being targets fixed for field formations under Saadhit, there is a need to formulate an action plan/target for all administrative authorities & CCAs for holding regular DPCs for promotions and MACP upgradation, disposal of IPRs in time bound manner (as in numerous cases IPRs are not been disposed off since the several years), disposal of TTA and TA claims, disposal of medical claims and other claims pending for the years. We hope that the CBIC would look into it and action plan for implementation would be formulated for Jan, 2023 to March, 2023 to bring down pendency on these matters to NIL. For achieving the targets on these matters, the HOD/HOO may be made responsible.

            6. In view of the above, the AIACEGEO very strongly feels and requests that your goodself may kindly consider the concerns raised hereinabove to initiate appropriate and corrective steps to ease out the situation for welfare of the officers and betterment of the organization.

            Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

                                                                                                                                                       

(HARPAL SINGH),

Secretary General.