Director General Excise and Taxation and Anti-Narcotics Punjab Saleha Saeed has said that being one of the biggest cities of the country and the Punjab, Gujranwala is the hub of commercial centers, shopping malls, private colleges, schools and other business entities and there is ample scope for significant increase in property tax collection in the division. She has urged the excise and taxation deptt to further enhance the recovery of taxes from the already assessed and non-assessed properties and asked that all big business entities must be brought into the tax net so that the revenue targets can be met and the revenue collection can be significantly increased. She said that according to the vision of the Punjab government, it was very important to increase the revenue collection and to ensure implementation of this priority of the govt, all field officers, instead of sitting in offices, must go out in the field and make it possible to achieve 100% recovery by December 30.
She expressed these views while addressing a meeting of officers after the inauguration of the new office of Excise and Taxation at Munir Chowk, Gujranwala. Additional Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Ali Akbar Bhindar, Director Excise Gujranwala Fizza Shah, ETOs Rana Gulzar Ahmed and Ijaz Akbar and ETOs of all the districts of the division also participated in the meeting.
DG Saleha Saeed said that achieving the recovery target was not a big success but the real challenge was to further increase the revenue by bringing more big business entities into the tax net. She said the main objective of the of the government was to provide maximum facilities to the people by increasing the revenue collection and made it clear to the field officers that they must improve their current performance by going out in the field themselves and achieving the set targets in all cases and all sectors and ensure 100% recovery. She further said that the field officers should not deliberately give concessions to large commercial plazas, shopping malls, colleges, schools and other business establishments as their concessions would be considered as misuse of government powers, negligence and collusion with the tax evaders. In such cases , strict departmental and disciplinary action would be taken against concerned officers and officials. She said that ETOs should not behave like the kings and instead they must be seen working in the field.
She said that after December 30, she would again start surprise visits of the field offices in the province to review the performance and no concessions would be made to the officers and officials who did not achieve the set targets and misused their powers. She said that according to the vision of Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Bazdar, solution to the public problems was the first priority of the govt servants and added that all the issues related to the computerized registration plates of the vehicles and issuance of motor vehicle cards would be resolved very soon. She expressed her firm commitment and resolve to mobilize all resources and take every possible step for the visible improvement in the performance of the deptt throughout the province and to make it a real public friendly and Corruption free institution. Earlier on her arrival at Gujranwala, Director Excise Fizza Shah, other officers and staff of the deptt welcomed her. The Director Excise gave a detailed briefing to the DG regarding revenue recovery in the division.
She said that all possible steps would be taken to ensure efficient performance and implementation of government priorities.
