The Superintendents of indirect taxes, who are the main field officers in the Central GST all over India, will keep away from the GST Day Celebrations this year, a statement from All-India Association of Superintendents of Central Tax (AIASCT) said on Thursday.
The only association recognized by the Union Finance Ministry to represent the cadre of Superintendents claimed that the Central GST Organisation is not being placed on a comparable footing with that of the GST organisations of the State and Union Territories in matters of infrastructure, duties and responsibilities and pay scales of identical and comparable cadres, to enable it to work to its full potential.
It said the cadres in the GST are not assigned proper duties and responsibilities to justify the numbers and equitable distribution of work.
‘Most of the work and responsibility is being burdened on the Superintendents, without any assistance, but only 10 higher cadres to supervise. (There is) poor and inadequate IT and other infrastructure. Back end provided for the officers is very poor and the officers as well as taxpayers suffer due to this,’ it said.
‘The computerisation is a great failure in as much as even now the field formations are being forced to submit reports after reports to each and every higher formation, in different formats, as and when called for. For this, the field officers have to very often disturb the Taxpayers because the data is not available in the system. When a lot of work is there at the level of Assistant Commissioners, including the need to issue speaking orders in each Refund case, the CBIC has not taken steps to increase the numbers according to the actual workload in successive cadre restructuring proposals,’ it said.
The association claimed that the board has failed even to fill up the existing vacancies of more than 2000 AC posts all over India and they have not issued even the All-India Seniority list of Superintendents way back from 1.1.2007 for enabling promotion to these vacant posts, while officers are retiring with a single promotion in their entire career of more than 35 years.
On the other hand, already more than 6000 Superintendents are drawing the pay level of the ACs due to the MACP Scheme of the Government of India. Even these Officials are not utilised to fill up the AC posts, without the necessity to spend even an extra penny more,’ the association said, adding if corrective measures are not initiated urgently in the GST administration of the country it will have a very adverse effect in the long run.
