“We have already forwarded the demand to the Ministry of Finance and we have been assured that the government will arrange required manpower very soon to strengthen the DRI,” Tanka Mani Sharma, director general of the DRI told myrepublica.com.
"The existing organizational structure of around 100 people that was put in place some 15 years back is not adequate enough to deal with the growing number of cases and changing nature of the revenue-related crimes," he said.
Sharma said that he has demanded the additional manpower from existing pool of civil servants, who have interests in investigation-related jobs with sound knowledge in commerce and economics along with the will to perform challenging jobs.
“We also need additional manpower with sound knowledge on computer programming and information technology since there has been massive uses of sophisticated means to misappropriate revenues in recent years,” he said.
The DRI has sought 8-10 under-secretaries, 15-16 investigation officers and 24-25 assistant officers. DRI has clearly stated that the age of all the 50 upcoming employees should be less than 45 years, Sharma added. DRI currently has two joint secretaries, two under-secretaries and seven officers.
The department also needs additional manpower because this year’s Finance Act has authorized the DRI to handle the cases related to non-tax revenue like fines, royalties, among others.
“Apart from that we are also thinking of opening one or two additional regional offices for which we need extra manpower,” Sharma said.
prem@myrepublica.com
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