Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has urged the government for taking necessary steps to ensure installation of electronic cash registers (ECRs) by certain businesses to reduce the scope of corruption.
In a recent letter to the Cabinet Division, the ACC said there were plenty of allegations about VAT evasion by many service providers because of not having the ECRs.
Under the circumstances, the commission suggested ensuring the use of ECRs in businesses to collect VAT-related information and bringing transparency in the process.
National Board of Revenue (NBR) in 2009 issued an order making installation of the ECRs mandatory for 11 categories of service providers to curb evasion of the Value Added Tax (VAT).
The categories include hotel, restaurants and fast food shops, sweetmeat shops, furniture shops, beauty parlours, community centres, posh shopping malls in metropolitan areas and relevant business organisations, department stores, general stores and other big and medium -- wholesale and retail -- business organisations.
Despite setting up of ECR machines by some of the service providers, most of the businesses are yet to come under the automation system to keep VAT and price-related information.
The letter, signed by ACC secretary Dr Md Shamsul Arefin, was sent to the cabinet secretary on November 8.
Meanwhile, the anti-graft body requested the land ministry to take appropriate actions to reduce irregularities in Land Record and Survey Department by implementing six recommendations given by the ACC's institutional inquiry team.
A report on the recommendations has been sent to the land secretary and the director general of Land Record and Survey Department on November 8.
According to the report, ACC asked the authorities concerned to carryout land survey by trained staffs instead of seasonal surveyors.
The survey division should do extensive campaign before surveying land so that the land owners could understand pros and cons of land surveying and get to know what types of documents they needed to show for proper surveying.
The report also said that the land survey and record keeping should be done digitally to get rid of faulty survey.
It suggested the department to take punitive actions against the dishonest officials and staffs, and nab corrupt people while taking bribe by setting traps as a strategy to reduce irregularities.
It also said that amendments could be brought to the Survey Act-1875, Survey and Settlement Manual-1935 or section 143 of State Acquisition and Tenancy Act-1950 to pave the way for land record correction and dissolve scope of special objection in case of ownership continuation.
Finally, the land ministry should scrutinise the incidents of recording khas land, vested property, abandoned property and waqf land as private property by taking unethical favour, the report added.
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