Want to meet DGFT Officers?

By Vijay Kumar

IT has been under consideration for some time that the meetings between the officers of DGFT and the Members of Trade/Public in respect of pending issues/grievances etc be made more fruitful and result oriented. To achieve this objective, DGFT has decided to streamline the procedure for interaction and in so far as DGFT Headquarters is concerned, visiting hours between 3 P.M. - 5 P.M. each working day would be earmarked for meetings with non officials/ Members of Trade.

While, visitors would be free to seek meetings with the officers of DGFT, who are authorised to interact, during the visiting hours, yet it would be more beneficial if prior appointment is fixed and the specific issues proposed to be discussed are spelt out in advance. This would enable the officers to prepare beforehand for the meeting and also inform the prospective visitors of their pre-occupation (if any) enabling alternative appointment.

This would help in saving the time of the visitors who otherwise have to waste their time waiting for a particular officer when such an officer may be pre-occupied elsewhere or be on tour or on leave.

This arrangement is applicable only for meetings with officers working in DGFT Headquarters. The DGFT has advised the RAs to issue similar trade notices at the local level.

It is great that a Government Department is concerned about the waste of time of the citizens.

Maybe the Revenue Departments should learn from this. Often assessees are asked to attend offices and when they arrive, the concerned officers are not available. Many babus in the Revenue get a kind of pleasure in making people wait. Some of them don't even bother to inform the assessee or his counsel when they cancel ‘personal hearings' without a concern for the time of others.

Recently a lawyer told me,

I had a hearing before the Commissioner who was the Commissioner for Central Excise and Service tax. On the date of hearing, I called up the Adjudication Superintendent, who was in charge of Central Excise. He told me that the Commissioner was not available and hearings on Central Excise matters are postponed, but he did know about Service Tax. Mine was a service tax case; so I asked him about my case. He said he didn't know about that - you should ask the Service tax Superintendent. He gave me the information that Commissioner was on leave and away in his native place a thousand miles away, but he cannot tell me about the hearing in Service Tax cases!

Sometimes, Counsels travel from distant places only to be told in the last moment that the officer is not available.

As far as possible, the Courts inform the public whenever a judge is going to be absent - but babus are not mere judges.

DGFT Trade Notice 1/2015., Dated: April 20, 2015