Even after two weeks of Awami League government resigning in the face of student-led mass uprising, a chaotic situation still prevails in the public administration. Since normalcy has not been restored anywhere starting from the secretariat to various autonomous institutions and the field level administration, people are being deprived of services.
The main reason for the chaos in public administration is that the Awami League government had been running the country for the past 15 years in an arbitrary manner. In majority of the cases they had appointed people of their choice, whether they were qualified or not. After the change of government, these officials have been either forced to resign or their appointments have been cancelled.
Meanwhile, officials denied of promotion have demonstrated in various government offices including the ministry of public administration. Also there have been reports in the media that quite a few officials have been harassed in some of the offices. Expressing his anger at this incident, a secretary said that he has never faced a situation like this in the 29 years of his service.
The interim government has terminated the contracts of many people who were appointed during the previous government’s regime, and this includes 11 secretaries as well. In order to run the administration, these vacancies have to be filled and the government has embarked on the process. However, questions have been raised about canceling the contractual appointment of one group of people and appointing another group of people through the same process.
There has been resentment in the public administration over contractual appointments for many years already. The people concerned have said that contractual appointments despite there being a lot of competent and efficient officers in the administration will remain as a bad precedent. This sort of appointment deprives the officials who aspire for promotion. If during the previous government’s regime they appointed people they trusted on contractual basis, what’s the guarantee that this time will be any exception?
Among the five people the interim government appointed on contractual basis this 17 August, there are also people who retired many years back. In this case accusation being raised of favouritism is not unexpected. If the last government has done injustice to these officials, a resolution to that should be sought through legal process and not through appointing them on contractual basis.
First of all, why does there have to be contractual appointments afresh despite there being experienced officials in the administration? They could have appointed people among those who were deprived of promotion as part of being in Awami League government’s bad books. But instead of doing that appointing people on contractual basis again did not set a good example.
An adviser to the interim government and former cabinet secretary Ali Imam Majumder told the media that when there’s a change in the government, some changes are required on a more urgent note. In his words, “Many people were appointed on contractual basis in many positions on special consideration.” But why should the interim government follow the same policy?
On this note, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Iftekharuzzaman rightly said that in place of favouritism of one party opportunity is being created for favouritism of another party and that must be paid attention to. In order to organise the administration it has to be proceed in such a way that there remains no risk in the whole procedure.
If the administration ravaged by favouritism is to be brought back on the right track, postings and promotions have to be done through a legal procedure. Cancelling contractual appointments from the previous regime and bringing in new contractual appointments is not a good solution. Contractual appointments are not desirable in any post except for people experienced in specialised education in specialised institutions. Every single appointment, posting and promotion shall be done following the administrative rules.