Govt jobs: Application costs jump instead of decline

Rakibul Islam is looking for a job after completing his post-graduation from Dhaka University. The application fees and commission for a ninth grade job of the government pay scale is Tk 640. Rakibul lives in a hostel in the capital’s Azimpur area and he earns his living as a house tutor.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, he said, “Instead of reducing the application fees for government and private jobs, the government has imposed an additional value added tax (VAT).”

The job aspirants have staged demonstrations at different times to press their demand of reducing the application fees for government and private jobs. Considering the situation of the unemployment, the Bangladesh Bank withdrew the application fee in 2016. However, the application fees have never been reduced in case of any other government jobs. Rather, the fees have increased. Now, the finance division has imposed a VAT on the applications for government and private jobs.

The finance division of the finance ministry issued a circular on 17 August saying the VAT rate would be 15 per cent of the commission of the mobile operators in cases of online applications. Usually, online applications are placed through the government mobile network operator TeleTalk. As per the rule, TeleTalk can claim a maximum 10 per cent of the application fee as commission.

The application fee for a ninth grade job is Tk 600. As such, TeleTalk’s commission will be Tk 60. A 15 per cent VAT will be added to this commission of Tk 60, which is Tk 9. In all, the job aspirants will have to bear Tk 669. They will have to bear an additional Tk 9 due to the newly imposed VAT.

This correspondent spoke to several job aspirants, former bureaucrats and economists over this issue. They said that an addition Tk 9 is not that much for job applications. However, that’s not the question. The question is why the government will use job applications of unemployed youth as a way to collect revenue.

The job aspirants say that they usually apply for several jobs at once. And the sum of that additional Tk 9 for all those applications is not negligible at all.

Rakibul said, “There are provisions of allowances for the unemployed in many countries, whereas our government is taking money from us.”

The government has announced a big budget for the 2023-24 fiscal. The size of the budget is nearly Tk 7.62 trillion. The revenue income has been estimated at Tk 5,000 billion to implement the budget. However, the duty collection has fallen along with the decline in imports. At the same time, the revenue collection has not been as expected due to the lack of demand in the domestic market.

The NBR has collected revenue of Tk 3252.72 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal, which is Tk 450 billion less than the demand. And the lowest growth of revenue collection in the last decade was recorded in the last fiscal. The government is not being able to provide the subsidy for power and fertilisers on time due to lack of money.

To increase revenue collection and reduce subsidies the government has raised the taxes and fees in several sectors. Besides, the prices of electricity, gas, fertiliser and fair-priced rice have gone up.

The cost of 51 services under the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) were raised exponentially last January. Now, the government has imposed a VAT on the commission from job application fees, which will increase the cost for job applications in all ministries, divisions, directorates, offices and autonomous agencies.

According to the Labour Force Survey of 2022, the number of unemployed people in the country was 2.63 million. The people who didn’t work for even an hour in seven days despite being prepared to work are considered as unemployed.

The final figures of the latest Labour Force Survey have not been published yet. Therefore, it has not been possible to identify the group of people with the highest unemployment rate. However, the rate of unemployed people usually is high among the common educated people.

The minimum application fee for a government job is Tk 100, where the maximum fee is Tk 600. The application for the BCS (Bangladesh Civil Service) exams under the Public Service Commission (PSC) is Tk 700.

The graduates usually apply for the ninth grade job. The application fee for this post is Tk 600. Many also look for jobs from 10th to 16th grade jobs. The application fees for these posts vary from 200 taka to 600 taka.

Meanwhile, application fees for some government agencies and companies are quite high. For instance, the application fee for a post in the Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited (DESCO) was between Tk 1,000 to Tk 1,500 last year.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, Shanto Ali, who had applied for 60 government jobs and later joined a private firm, said he had spent more than Tk 30,000 for job applications alone. In addition to that was the transport and food cost for attending the exams.

Dinajpur resident Shanto said the bus fare from his district to Dhaka and vice-versa would cost around Tk 1,500. The minimum hotel and food cost for two days would be around Tk 2,000 and Tk 500 respectively.

He further said, “It’s hard to ask money from family after completing studies. Actually, nobody cares about the unemployed.”

According to the latest figures of the public administration ministry, some 26 per cent of the government approved posts are vacant, which means 500,000 vacant posts. Analysing the job circulars, it has been learnt that around 6 million job aspirants apply against 50,000 posts in government and private agencies. Of them, around 2.5 million people apply for several thousand posts in primary schools.

Speaking regarding the newly imposed VAT on job application, former cabinet secretary Ali Imam Majumder said, “The application fee is already a burden for the job aspirants. And this newly imposed VAT will further increase the cost of the unemployed. If there is no other way than imposing VAT, then the application fee should be reduced and adjusted accordingly.”

He further said that the number of applicants is huge now. The government should not take additional application fees from the applicants.

“The government has many alternative sources of income. The government could be a bit sympathetic towards the unemployed youth by withdrawing the VAT in this sector,” the former cabinet secretary added.

The job aspirants have staged demonstrations demanding the reduction of the application fee from time to time. Some existing and former students of the Dhaka University had formed a human chain in protest of excessive application fees in January 2020. The students of Jahangirnagar University staged demonstrations with the same demand on DU campus last March.

There are several Facebook groups of job aspirants. Many have condemned the government’s decision to impose VAT on the commission of job applications in these groups. Some of them referred to the allegation of irregularities and money laundering in the banking sector saying that if the government could control these sorts of activities then there would be no need to impose VAT on the unemployed.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, Professor Selim Raihan of the economics department of Dhaka University said, “The government is trying to extend the tax net in various ways. However, it would have been great if the unemployed youth could be exempted from this. They are already paying the duties. So there would not be any problem in taking no VAT from them.”

*This report appeared on the print and online versions of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu