PESHAWAR: The Federal Tax Ombudsman on Thursday organised an awareness workshop on its project titled `public awareness and advocacy about dispute resolution mechanism of federal tax ombudsman` for medium and small-scale enterprises here.

FTO adviser (implementation & monitoring) M Siddique highlighted the historical perspective of the ombudsman`s office and gave a detailed presentation on the working of the FTO offices.

He said there were 150 ombudsman`s of fices in the world.

`In Pakistan, the ombudsman`s office was established in 1983, while in 2000, an independent ofnce of the Federal Tax Ombudsman came into being,` he said.

Mr. Siddique shed elaborated on the complaint filing procedure and other available facilities provided by the FTO offices to the aggrieved taxpayers.

He said the mandate of FTO offices was to ensure prompt and inexpensive redress of the taxpayers` genuine grievances against the maladministration of the tax employees of the Federal Board ofRevenue. The adviser said around 1,500 complaints were handled by the FTO offices across the country annually.

He highlighted the FTO success stories since its establishment in 2000.

Mr. Siddique said taxpayers could file complaints with the FTO by courier, by hand, by email or online.

He said the services of FTO offices were free of charge and citizen-friendly and that the complaints were decided within 60 days.

The adviser said Form-A was available on the FTO website for taxpayers to lodge complaints and that the form could be obtained from the FTO offices and main secretariat as well.

The traders gave feedback to the FTO team, which comprised senior adviser Khalid Masood and advisers M Siddique and Kazim Hussain.

Central Tanzeem-i-Taajran Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president Sharafat Ali Mubarak, provincial general secretary Shaukat Ali Khan, senior vice president Nisarullah Khan and other office-bearers also addressed the event.Bureau Report