THE Inland Revenue Board (IRB) will be parting way with 42 monthly contract officers and 998 daily contract officers come Dec 31 in line with digitisation transformation which has enabled most its tasks and work functions to be automated while further improving the cost of efficiency in administering the country’s taxation system.
In line with this latest exercise, the tax collector said the decision to discontinue the practice of employing monthly and daily contract officers were made back in 2018 with full implementation to come into force on Jan 1, 2023.
“Nevertheless, the notification regarding the decision not to hire the contract officers has been disseminated as early as the beginning of 2022 to prep the officers involved so they are able to better organise their career journey by being on the look-out for job opportunities in the open market,” IRB pointed out in a statement.
“Even so, IRB is very aware and concerned about the situation experienced by contract officers who have devoted their lives to this agency.”
As such, the country’s direct tax administrator has taken the initiative help affected officers to get jobs through organising joint programmes with tax agent companies for recruitment purposes.
“In addition, IRB is involved in organising the MYFutureJobs programme implemented by SOCSO to facilitate job search for the affected contract officers, the result of which 59 contract officers have successfully obtained other jobs and have terminated their contract with the board in 2022 alone.”
In a related development, IRB also stressed that it is unable to offer automatic appointment to permanent posts to all contract officers to ensure a balance of opportunity is made available to qualified candidates comprising existing permanent officers and other external candidates.
“For the record, a total of 653 contract officers have been appointed to a permanent position for the period from 2017 to 2022,” revealed IRB.
“Therefore, IRB’s decision to discontinue the service of its contract officers is not motivated by personal interest of any party but solely based on the desire to increase the operational efficiency of this agency in addition to ensuring financial resources of the country is used optimally to avoid any waste.”
It added: “IRB would also like to state that the direct tax collection revenue that it administers cannot be used solely for the purpose of extending the contract this officer as claimed by some parties. If this recommendation is taken and implemented, it will invite negative perspectives from other parties.
“On the other hand, the direct collection of national taxes should be distributed equally prosperity and well-being of the country.” – Dec 29, 2022
