Staff Reporter :Former bureaucrats have hit out the government’s approval of promotion of civil servants en masse and said that such wild promotion against fewer posts would create anomalies in the public administration.They also expressed their apprehension about getting proper service from the newly promoted government officials when excessive promotion had already made the civil administration imbalanced and heavy one.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is in charge of the Ministry of Public Administration, on Monday approved the promotion of 872 government officials to the level of Deputy, Joint secretary and Additional Secretary.Sources said, there are already 1,280 Deputy Secretaries against 830 approved posts in the formal structure of the civil administration while the number of Joint Secretaries is 869 against 350 posts and Additional Secretaries 229 against 120 posts. “Usually promotion is given against a vacant post. But promotion without posts is illogical. The method which the government chooses for promotion this time is unprecedented, as there is no single evidence of such promotion in the world,” Dr Akbar Ali Khan, former Cabinet Secretary, told The New Nation on Tuesday.Terming such a promotion illegal, he said, the existing law of civil service does not permit this kind of promotion when there are any post for them. “Promotions without post are not appropriate. But the government did it….it will hurt dynamism of the civil administration,” Ali Imam Majumder, a former Cabinet Secretary, told The New Nation on yesterday.He, however, refrained from making any comment about the justification of such promotion without creating posts for the newly promoted bureaucrats. “The government went for the mass promotion at a time when no vacancy was left in the civil bureaucracy. Even, transfer of the bureaucrats has become very difficult due to limited posts,” said a former Senior Secretary. He also mentioned that excessive promotion is also responsible for making many bureaucrats OSD (officers on special duty). This measure is preventing efficient and skilled government officials from performing their duties. As they are failing to perform their duties, the state is also being deprived of their service. “The government should avoid such a large scale promotion considering the overall interest of the people as well as the country,” he added.
