Ludhiana , June 26: Excise and Taxation Officers ( ETOs) Association, Punjab has demanded that the state government should consider their genuine demands which include pay parity, promotions and official vehicles for officers among others.
The newly elected president of the association Bhupinder Bhatia urged the government to fulfil all their demands.
The general body meeting of the ETO s of Punjab was held at Friends Hotel, Ludhiana on June 24 where the new office bearers of the association comprising 273 ETOs were elected. More than 150 ETOs attended the meeting inspite of being busy in giving shape to modalities of transition to new GST regime.
The demands of ETOs included pay parity with PCS (EB), which is still denied despite huge contribution of their cadre to the economy of state, pay codes to all GST enforcing stat officers on the lines of central government officers enforcing GST, Promotion of ETO’s as AETC after 5 years of service so as to makeup the short fall of officers in GST regime of AETC cadre, government vehicles for every ETO and Blue/Red flasher for all government official vehicles of enforcement and “Excise” enforcement wings for better field checking on patterns of Haryana Govt.
Earlier today ,the association of ETOs elected Bhupinder Bhatia as president of the association whereas, Harjot Singh Bedi was elected General Secretary of the association.Kali Charan Jangid was elected Senior Vice President, Dr. Navreet Sekhon as Vice President and SR. Rohit Gupta as cashier.
The office Bearers raised various issues related to the cadre and said that the ETO’s were dedicated and it was unanimously decided that as Punjab Government was already aware of the contribution of excise and VAT enforcing Officer, we rededicate our cadre towards the good of successful implementation of GTS in state and working tirelessly with hard work to maximize the revenue for stat of Punjab.
Bhatia further informed that ETO’s of Excise & Taxation Department Contributes 80 % of the Total revenue of the state though VAT and Excise, which is going to further increase once GST comes into force. The ETO’s of the department through their dedication and hard work have already outperformed in first stage of migration of dealers into GTS.
More than 90% of the dealers of VAT have been migrated to GTS whereas central excise and customer department has remained for behind by migrating only less than 40% of dealers of central excise and less than 1% of the service tax dealers.
Thus high performance the cadre has proved its for better capabilities in handling various challenges under GST. He further added that the cadre will continue to work hard to mobilc the revenue for the government so that various programs and policies of the government can be implemented, added Bhatia.
