Analysis of Service

Structure
By: Urooj Qaiser

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Table of Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Enforcement Officers Contract ................................................................................................... 4
Flaws ................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Contingent Paid Staff ...................................................................................................................... 8

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Introduction
In most countries the responsibility of service tax collection for all the provinces lies

upon a central body rather than having a separate body for each province. For

example India’s two revenue bodies, the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the

Central Board of Excise and Customs, are both under the Department of Revenue,

under Ministry of Finance. Where, the Central Board of Excise and Customs deals

mainly with task formulation and implementation of policy concerning to the levy and

collection of customs, central excise duties and service tax and the Central Board of

Direct Taxes provides inputs for policy and planning of direct taxes in India, and is

also responsible for administration of direct tax such as income tax. However in the

case of Pakistan sales tax is administered by semiautonomous provincial bodies,

which are Punjab Revenue Board, Sindh Revenue Board, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Revenue Authority and Balochistan Revenue Authority. The purpose of having

semiautonomous bodies is as following;

(i) A semiautonomous body can be free from political interference in day-to-day

operations.

(ii) It can implement human resources policies differently from the Ministry of

Finance to recruit and retain motivated and skilled staff members.

(iii) It can implement organizational reforms such as establishing specialized audit

functions.

(iv) It’s budget arrangements offers more flexibility to invest in information and

communication technology (ICT).

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The focus of this report will solely be directed towards PRA and its current

organizational structure. The organizational structure of PRA is very similar to that of

CBEC, where the Chairperson is appointed by the Chief minister on the basis of

professional qualification. Under the Chairperson are not less than four members

selected on the basis of subject specialization. Currently in PRA there are four

members from the following fields; policy, legal, support services and operations.

Further narrowing the scope of this study to the analysis of service structure of the

two broad categories of employees working at PRA will help us evaluate possible

flaws in the structure and give us an idea about how to bridge those gaps.

The two distinct divisions of employees are enforcement officers and the contingent

paid staff. First we must divert our attention towards developing an understanding of

the contractual basis on which these enforcement officers are hired. Their contract is

designed on the basis of the Punjab Government Contract Policy 2004.

Enforcement Officers Contract

Tenure

The period of initial contract appointment varies between 3 to 5 years and the

employee is not eligible to demand for extension under any circumstances. The

extension of the contract can only be recommended by the management if the

performance of the employee is above average implying that it was good or very good

throughout the contractual term. The extension however must be granted again in

form of a renewed contract for 3 to 5 years time only not for an indefinite period of

time. The decision pertinent to the extension of the contract must be made by the

relevant authorities before the expiry date of the prevalent contract.

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Transfer/ Posting

The contract appointments are post specific and are not transferable implying that the

employee does not have the right to ask for a transfer from one post to another.

Furthermore an exception is made in this clause to facilitate woman i.e. a woman

employee may be allowed to transfer to the place of residence of her husband.

Pay Package

Pay of Rs. 65,000 per month shall be allowed from the date of joining for a 17th grade

officer. Moreover 30% of this minimum pay scale must be given to the employee as a

social security benefit per month. Apparently, the 30 percent additional amount was

used as a market signal and when the contract employees were attracted in sufficient

numbers it was deemed to be an appropriate amount.

Medical Facilities

Medical facilities as admissible to the regular employees of 
his scale under the

rules.

Traveling Allowance/ Daily Allowance

TA/DA as applicable to the regular employees of his scale under the rules. 


Pension

Appointment on contractual basis shall be non pensionable.

Leave

 Casual leave with a maximum limit of 24 days per annum may be allowed.

The authority reserves all the rights to grant casual leave of 10 days or in some

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 cases 15 days casual leave at a period in time.

 Unpaid leave on medical basis must be permitted only when a medical

certificate has been submitted to the relevant authorities.

 Paid leave of 45 days for Hajj is permissible only once during the contractual

term. However Hajj leave for the second time under special circumstances will

be unpaid.

 Unpaid leave for Umrah is also permissible for 15 days.

 Special leave may be granted to a female on the death of her husband only

after the submission of death certificate. In such circumstances paid leave of

130 days will be granted starting from the day her husband died.

Termination

 In case of unsatisfactory performance during the probation time period the

relevant authority hold the right to terminate the contract.

 If the medical leave continues beyond 3 months the contact can be terminated.

 If at any stage in time it is discovered that the individuals has secured

appointment based on false documents the appointment is considered void and

the person is liable to refund all amounts received from the government as a

consequence of appointment in addition to other legal actions that might be

taken against that individual.

 Contract appointment shall be liable to termination on one- month’s notice or

on payment of one-month pay.

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Flaws

CAP included the performance evaluation form as an annex to the policy. According

to this two-page form, a number of performance assessment criteria were used. The

form titled ‘Performance Evaluation Report’ required in the first section basic

information about the employee following which there were three other sections. The

second section allowed assessment of integrity with three boxes that listed options of

‘honest’, ‘reported to be corrupt’ and ‘believed to be corrupt’. The third section was

to be used for overall grading of work. It allowed grading among five levels ranging

from ‘very good’ to ‘poor’. This section had brief instructions for evaluation also.

According to them, the assessment was to be carried out in comparison with other

employees with similar assignments, personal qualities, attitude, job proficiency,

efficiency and punctuality. The fourth section is recommendatory for further retention

in government employment, asking for listing the individual as ‘useful’ or ‘not

useful’. However the major flaw lies in the fact that no detailed evaluation

instructions accompanied the form and the policy also did not spell out record keeping

instructions but left it to the departments. To make the system more efficient and

integrated a computer application must be designed on similar basis such as google

form with a fixed minimum standard for contract renewal. Once performance

evaluation is done for the last year of the contractual time period an automatic result

must be generated weather the contract should be extended or not. This system should

also be integrated with the HR department so that if the contract is to be extended

they can begin the process immediately. Moreover, in a recent study it was observed

that performance evaluation system was tilted toward integrity and less toward

assignment based assessment of performance. This could have emerged from the

attempts in the public sector to stem corruption in the systems. To account for this

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equal weights must be assigned to all the sections or variables, which will also help

remove any bias.

Another missing gap in the contract of enforcement officers at PRA is the additional

30% of the basic pay, which is there to attract competitive workers in the field.

Without the additional incentive it may be very time consuming and difficult task to

find the appropriate and competitive personnel.

Furthermore, long-term career incentives for contract employees under the contract

are unclear. Unclear promotion chances tend to demotivate employees and decrease

their productivity. The contract allowed 3 to 5 year contracts. The duration of these

contracts is much longer and predictable than many comparable contracts in the

private sector. But it does not spell out a career path moving through progressively

senior contracts. Departments are organized as hierarchies. Regular employees have

normal expectations of moving up in the hierarchy with experience and continued

good performance.

The contract also fails to account for any increments in the basic pay. To account for

this problem monthly price indices are uploaded on the website for Pakistan Bureau

of Statistics a forecasting analysis can be done on the previous years trend to predict

the future rate and the wages should be adjusted accordingly so that the real wages

keep increasing and the employee at no point in time feels demotivated and his

efficiency keeps increasing.

Contingent Paid Staff

The contingent paid staff is not hired on contractual basis instead they are hired on a

daily pay roll system. The contingent paid staff includes PS, assistants, drivers and so

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on. A daily pay roll system is very time consuming to maintain and the record must be

updated everyday. Moreover, if a member of the staff leaves because there is no

guarantee that they will stay, the process of finding someone to take his place is a

long and tedious task.

The solution for this problem can be explained in one word “outsourcing”. Lets look

at an example of our neighboring country India. Their contingent paid staff is

outsourced, where the government organizations publishes in newspaper that they

want an attendant, assistant or sweeper and different companies prepare their

quotations and submit their bids. The government agency than decides the company

of their choice and the employees are outsourced.