Inter-cadre discrepancies to be removed

To appease the agitating officials of different cadres of Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS), the government has initiated a process to reform the organisational structures of the services to introduce "a permanent system" for promotions.

"We have initiated this process three weeks ago and urged all the cadre authorities concerned to submit their recommendations to their respective ministries which will then send the proposals to the public administration ministry," Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister's Office Abul Kalam Azad told The Daily Star.

He made the revelation yesterday after a meeting with leaders of the Prokrichi-BCS Somonnoy Committee, an umbrella of 26 of the 28 BCS cadre services. Officials of the administration and the foreign cadres are not in the platform.

Removing discrepancies in the promotion system is one of the demands for which the officials of the 26 cadres have been demonstrating for the last several weeks following the announcement of the Eighth National Pay Scale.

"With the reform, the longstanding demands of most of the BCS cadres will be fulfilled," AFM Bahauddin Nasim, convenor of the platform, said after the meeting.

The Committee leaders say officials of the 26 cadres do not get promotion on time. They are always told that there are no approved posts for promotions. As a result, the officials remain in the same position for years, which has created "a distance" between them and the admin cadre officials.

Admin cadre officials usually hold most of the key posts in the 26 cadre services.

"We demanded cancellation of the deputation of admin cadre officials to the posts of other cadres and the authorities have agreed to cancel the system," said Prof M Iqbal Arslan, secretary of the Committee, who attended yesterday's meeting.

Yesterday's meeting decided to bring organisational reforms in the non-cadre services as well to end discriminations among the cadre and the non-cadre officials.

According to the new pay scale, BCS cadres will join public service as eighth grade employees while non-cadre class-one officers will get the ninth grade when they join service.

"The meeting decided that both cadre and non-cadre officers will get the same grade," said Nasim, also an Awami League lawmaker.

It was also decided in the meeting that the Upazila Parishad Act would be amended to make the upazila nirbahi officers (UNOs) the chief executives of the upazilas, he said.

Under the existing act, the UNOs and the upazila parishad chairmen share the authority.

Dr Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, senior secretary to the public administration ministry; Mahbubur Rahman, senior secretary to the finance ministry; PMO Director General (admin) Kabir Bin Anwar, and BCS Coordination Committee leader Engineer Abdus Sabur, among others, were present at the meeting.