LAHORE: The All Pakistan FBR employees have announced a pen-down strike all over the country on Friday (tomorrow) to highlight their demand for a pay raise and increase in fuel allowance.

In a press release issued on Wednesday, the FBR employees including assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners said they had presented a charter of demands to the federal government for its sympathetic consideration. They would extend the scope of the protest if their demands remained unmet, they said. They said they had already informed the FBR chairman about their grievances.

They said the government had announced a pay raise and increase in various allowances for the employees of the IB, the FIA and other institutions in the recent budget but the incentives had been denied to the FBR workforce despite the fact that they were on the government agenda. “This is sheer discrimination with the employees who work day in and day out to collect revenue and contribute to national progress,” said the press release.

It’s ironic that the FBR employees who played a vital role in country’s economic growth were themselves deprived of a decent increase in salaries and allowances, they deplored. They demanded that the government give a raise equivalent to five basic pays, special revenue allowance and up to Rs30,000 fuel allowance to those in grade 17 and above.

“It is distressing to observe that the budget did not cater for the demands of the FBR employees. The longstanding demand of de-freezing of the IJP allowance has once again been overlooked,” the employees said in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee.

They said the FBR employees put in their maximum efforts to meet the huge revenue targets being assigned to them. “This is evident from the fact that when the rest of the country including federal and provincial departments were having five working days a week, FBR employees have for the last six months sacrificed their weekends by attending their offices for six days,” said the agitators.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022