KARACHI: A statement said that all Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) employees would hold a “pen down strike” on June 17 to show that they want a pay raise and an increase in their fuel allowance.
The people who are upset have also said that if their demands are not met, they will go on a sit-down strike for even longer.
Employees have been asking for many years for their IJP allowance to be unfrozen, but according to the statement, this has not even been approved in the budget for fiscal year 2023.
The officers want a raise in the form of a special revenue allowance and a higher fuel allowance. This is because the police force is the only federal organisation that has been meeting its budget goals.
The person who was upset said that all of their requests had been sent to the FBR chairman through the right channels.
In the budget, the FBR employees were promised a pay raise, but it was taken out of the bill at the last minute, which made the employees upset.
All employees of the president’s house and the prime minister’s secretariat have had their allowances unfrozen by the prime minister. However, the government has not given FBR employees the same right.
In the most recent budget, pay raises and allowance increases were given to several other federal government institutions. However, the FBR staff did not get the same treatment, even though they did a great job of meeting their budgetary goals.
Even though Finance Minister Miftah Ismail praised the FBR for bringing in Rs490 billion in revenue in May 2022, the budget did not address the long-standing requests of officials to de-freeze their IJP allowances and raise their pay.
In the federal budget for 2020/21, it said that FBR income had gone up by 17% and that the government was on track to meet the new goal of Rs4.8 trillion, which it did.
In the same way, in the financial year 2021/22, the net revenue collected from July to May grew by 28.4% to Rs5.34 trillion billion, compared to Rs4.16 trillion billion during the same time period in fiscal year 2021.
The FBR employees have been working on Saturdays for the past six months, which is different from the rest of the federal and provincial governments. These employees always go above and beyond to do their jobs.
The people who were wronged said that it was ironic that FBR employees were being denied their basic rights during a time of high inflation.