Income Tax Employees Federation meet tomorrow

Allahabad, Aug 23 (UNI) The two-day central working committee meeting of Income Tax Employees Federation (ITEF) will begins here tomorrow.

The central working committee -- consisting of all state units' leaders, besides the central office-bearers -- is meeting for the first time at Allahabad.

ITEF, the sole representative body of all non-gazetted employees of department numbering about 50,000, will discuss on its various demands, including new recruitment, promotion, interim relief and setting up of sixth central pay commission.

Talking to newsmen here today, ITEF general secretary K K N Kutty said presently over 9,000 posts were lying vacant in the department.

''...following non-recruitment of fresh employees, tax collection is suffering a lot. The number of tax payers, which was about 1.5 crores in 1998 has today increased to 3.2 crores.'' He said the department had decided to outsource the receipt of returns to post offices instead of addressing insufficiency of workforce.

''The government has chosen to handover the function of the department to an agency, which does not have the expertise to deal with the situation.'' ''The return so received through the post offices are simply dumped at various IT offices without any indication of jurisdiction, without assigning any serial number and without making any certification as to the validity of returns. It is not possible for the post offices to verify the returns properly for want of requisite expertise.'' He said all unions and association of employees and workers will organise a day's strike on December 14 against the said policies, especially against the decisions taken by the government to introduce a new contributory pension scheme by way of enactment in Parliament.

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