LIKE other countries, civil service jobs lure the top meritorious of the country from the beginning of the system introduced in the British era under Indian Civil Service Act. Though the Bangladesh Civil Service jobs attract the top meritorious, but the scope of employing meritorious is limited as several quota provisions eat up 56 percent of the first class cadre jobs, which also mired with substandard questions, question paper leakage, lengthy examination procedures, and political influence and corruption. The inefficiency of our civil bureaucracy in almost every sphere of government is nothing but the result of recruitment of comparatively dulls. Before going down to pits, we wish to have the public service jobs reserve for the meritorious inclusively to boosting up the country’s comprehensive development and corruption-free bureaucracy. Amid the debate on the quota provision is legit or not, the parliamentary standing committee on Ministry of Public Administration on Tuesday recommended introduction of an alternative system in the preliminary qualifying test instead of present 100 marks MCQ test. Bangladesh Public Service Commission usually arranges 100 marks MCQ in preliminary test, 1000 marks written examinations and 200 marks viva-voce in the recruitment process of Class-I public service officer. Committee member Mustafa Lutfullah told a National English daily that the MCQ system should be changed and an alternative system should be adopted in the selection process as MCQ test could not screen out real talents.Earlier in 2013, the 34th BCS aspirants stormed the city streets and on university and college campuses across the country protesting the introduction of quota-system in preliminary result. Under the current BCS examinations quota system, 30 percent of the seats are reserved for children of freedom fighters and 10 percent for women. A further 10 percent is reserved for districts, 5 per cent for ethnic minorities and 1 percent for people with disabilities, leaving only 44 percent open for merit-based recruitment.Another debate may be spiraled soon as Public Service Commission has proposed an amendment in the “Bangladesh Public Service Regulation” that would incorporate the finally passed BCS job aspirants into Class-II non-cadre government jobs, along with Class-I non-cadre jobs, which was incorporated earlier, due to limited offer of Class-I jobs, said a vernacular daily on Wednesday. Former PSC Chairman Shahadat Hossain said though the change will widen employment scopes for the unemployed youths but who actually passes the hurdle for class-I jobs may unlikely to be employed as Class-II officer.The 56% quota-system in the BCS jobs largely criticized as discriminatory, illogical, violation of the Constitution, and a scope for recruitment of politically motivated dull candidates as statistics shows in five BCS examinations from 2005-2012, PSC recommended appointing 3,179 successful candidates to the posts of 15 Class-I general cadres. Of them, 1,493 were picked on merit and 1,686 from different quotas. A large portion of government jobs remained vacant for not having merit candidates and the candidates recruited thru’ quota-system fails to put their sign of efficiency in bureaucracy. We recommend the government to come up with the system to recruit real talents only, ignoring political influence and bureaucratic corruption, to save the nation.
