THIS article is not intended to be sarcastic, impolite, cheeky, critical, disrespectful, or defamatory. It is, in fact, intended to be just the opposite. Although focused on analysing the structure and statistics of one of the most important and prestigious organisations of Pakistan — the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) — this case study is just as valid for any other government department. The study explains how organisations can get bogged down under their own weight and what may be done to turn them around.

According to the data provided under the right to information law, FBR has generously stockpiled 18,332 employees on its payroll — 15,132 of them in Grade 1 to 16 and 3,200 in Grade 17 to 22. While the world pushes for flat hierarchies, FBR moves in the opposite direction — dividing and subdividing employees into 22 layers and 120 unique and questionable job designations.

Even a basic numerical analysis of the 18,332 FBR employees begins to unveil a monumental warehouse of manpower. FBR on its payroll, has 38 persons deployed as ‘record sorters’, 63 as ‘qasid’, 273 as ‘bailiffs’, 517 as ‘notice servers’, 546 as ‘daftari’ and 1,592 as ‘naib qasids’. Thus FBR employs 2,839 individuals to perform almost identical........

© Dawn