The resentment is brewing among the officers of Orissa Financial Service (OFS) following the recent restructuring of their cadre along with those in Orissa Administrative Service (OAS) and Orissa Engineering Service (OES).
If the situation continues unresolved, it may adversely impact the commercial tax collection drive in the state, sources said.
As per the restructured cadre, the post of the Commercial Tax Officer (CTO) which was a class-II post, has been upgraded to Junior class-1. However, the post of Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Tax (ACCT), continues to be Junior class-1 as before, creating administrative problems as both the ACCTs and CTOs are bracketed in the same cadre. At present, there are 75 ACCT posts in the state and the CTOs report to ACCT. Besides, ACCTs are considered as the key functionaries in the commercial tax administration.
Though CTOs work under one ACCT, the restructuring of the OFS cadre has created a delicate situation, where the ACCT can’t ensure accountability on part of the CTOs, as they are in the same rank.
This has created resentment among the OFS officers who are planning to bring the matter before the state government soon. Complicating the issue further, the post of treasury officers, who were counterparts of the ACCTs, have been upgraded to class-1(senior), leaving the ACCTs in the class-1 (junior) rank.
This comes at a time when the officers belonging to OFS cadre got a raw deal in the recent restructuring of cadres. Though they demanded increasing the number of posts in special secretary grade to 12 from 2 at present, they were finally given 4 posts in this rank.
Similarly, their demand for increasing the special administrative grade (SAG) posts to 49 from 30 at present was also not accepted by the government and the number of SAG posts remained unchanged at 30. The demand for increasing the posts in the supertime scale to 68 from 53 at present was also not met. The number of posts was increased by 2 at this level.
The strength of the cadre in Junior branch (OFS-1) was increased to 450 from 186 at present. “We were expecting proportionate increase in posts at different levels, but were given a raw deal compared to the OAS cadre. This will be brought before the government”, an OFS official said.