ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has introduced the policy of internal job posting aimed at bringing in professionalism and ensuring transparency in the selection process for important positions as part of the restructuring of the tax administration.

Talking to Dawn, member, Human Resource Management (HRM), Zafar Aziz Osmani, said that this was the first ever selection process to select the best for specialized positions on special pay introduced in the public sector, which might be followed in the other public sectors.

With the introduction of this process, the HRM member hoped that only genuine people in future would be selected for important position in the tax administration as it would reduce the chances of political or other intervention in selections.

Mr Osmani said that in the first step, the CBR had decided to appoint at least 33 officers through this process for specialized assignments at the CBR.

The functions of these officers would include tax policy and reform (TP&R); CBR audit team; information management services (IMS); human resource management (HRM) and taxpayers education and facilitation (TPE&F).

Elaborating further, the HRM member said the CBR had invited applications latest by December 10, from the interesting officers from the field formations and board. The selection panel would interview short-listed officers in the middle of December 2002, and it was intended that all the appointments would be finalized by the end of December, added the member.

According to the HRM member, eight officers of HRM would include: secretary HR planning; secretaries HR development; organizational development; HRM coordination; coordination; second secretaries, project management; coordination and HR policies and training.

The appointment of five officers for IMS would be: secretaries project management; system architecture design; system network architecture design; second secretaries automation coordinator (direct taxes); and automation coordinator (indirect taxes).

Under this system, for audit six senior officials would be appointed as chief, sales tax audit; chief, income tax audit; secretaries, sales tax audit support; sales tax audit monitoring; income tax audit support; income tax audit monitoring.

Four officials would be appointed for TPF&E: chief taxpayer facilitation; secretary development income tax; secretary development sales tax and customs; and second secretary coordination.

The 10 officials of the policy and tax reform would include: chief coordination (project); project director; accounts officer (projects) two positions; chief (business process re-engineering); secretary (business process re-engineering) total three position; team leader/member business process re-engineering (total positions 12); chief tax reform administration; secretary tax reform administration; second secretary tax reform coordination and second secretary tax reform administration.

Mr Zafar said the officers meeting maximum of the required criteria and interested in the position would indicate their option and would be subsequently interviewed by a team of senior officers at the CBR.