PESHAWAR: Around 1,300 employees of the excise, taxation and narcotics department will begin a token protest from today (Wednesday) by wearing black armbands to press the government for abolishing scheduled posts in the department to ensure their better career progression.

The decision was made in a general body meeting of the department’s welfare association, which was attended by officials from all over the province.

The participants passed a resolution demanding the KP government abolish the department’s scheduled posts, which are usually occupied by officers from the Provincial Management Service and Pakistan Administrative Service and deputationists.

Warn they’ll go on strike if demands not met

The scheduled posts in the department include secretary, additional secretary, deputy secretary, section officer, director general, director administration and other posts. The meeting also demanded immediate repatriation of deputationists working in excise to their parent departments.

The meeting decided that the excise employees would start wearing black armbands from Wednesday until Sept 7 to press the government to accept their demands and if the demands weren’t met, they would observe two hours pen-down strike daily from Sept 7 to Sept 13.

Thereafter, a general body will be called to decide on whether to stage a complete pen-down strike and go to the prime minister’s Banigala mansion for protest.

Excise employees welfare association president Sufian Haqqani told Dawn that the department’s staffers were frustrated due to lack of career progression and have to spend years on a single position, which has forced them to start agitation.

He said that the association sent several letters to chief minister, chief secretary and secretary establishment department detailing their issues and grievances; however, the high ups did not pay any heed to their genuine issues.

Mr Haqqani said excise was a technical department and all of its officers had worked on specialised beats like tax collection and narcotics for several years.

“The government imposes the PMS and PAS officers on us. They usually take five to six months to understand the department’s working only to be posted out,” he said, adding that it was a vicious cycle and most of department’s regular staff is wasted making the new comers understand nuances of taxation.

He said in last five years, excise department had nearly doubled its collection from Rs1.5 billion to Rs3.5 billion per annum despite all hurdles and the officials who made this possible deserve better treatment from the provincial government.

Mr Haqqani said the excise department’s regular employees never get a chance to head their own department, while proposed narcotics wing of the department would also be headed by a director.

He said the association demanded the government abolish scheduled posts and appoint the excise department’s own officers to the posts.

The association president said the government should also reserve a quota for them in the PMS so that their officers could be posted to other departments as well.

He said after a certain period, the excise officers were left stuck as all senior positions were reserved for outsiders frustrating them.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2019