Do the oppose to permanentize job for fear of losing seniority?
The ICT tower of Agargaon, the capital’s administrative area, has become tense with agitation and counter-movement. After 10 years of waiting, 163 programmers of two projects under the Information and Communication Technology Division are in doubt about taking home the harvest of the long agitation even after the issuance of job placement notification on August 14.
According to sources, a number of programmers, who were made permanent in 2019, opposed the placement of the protestors who waited for a decade to be placed permanently.
The programmers got their demand met through the anti-discrimination strike. But the 9th grade gazetted officers blocked the Director General of the department, Md. Mustafa Kamal, on the night of August 15 for fear of losing promotion and seniority. Later, the DG was freed around 2:30 am with the help of the army. After that the aggrieved people spread some wrong information during that blockade. When the situation became confusing, the programmers and assistant programmers protested in front of the ICT tower on Sunday afternoon as the regularization process was delayed again.
Assistant Programmer Shariful Islam, who participated in the protest, was asked to answer the question why the permanentizing is urgent, he said that according to the notification issued by the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology in 2015, 2 project officers were posted in the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology. As per condition No. 3 of the notification, the consecutive project period service of the officers transferred to the revenue sector shall be considered only for calculation of pension and seniority. Accordingly, the date of joining the project is considered as the date of joining service for the fixation of officers after transfer to the revenue sector and accordingly the account office issues the certificate of earned leave for vacation and other work. Condition No. 6 asks to follow the government orders of the Cabinet Division in respect of reservation of posts temporarily transferred to the revenue sector. As per proviso No. 5 of the order, the existing provision of temporary creation of posts in the revenue sector for 5 years and posts transferred from development projects to revenue sector after three years is repealed, both posts temporarily created in the revenue sector and posts transferred from development projects to revenue sector will be made permanent after three years. It can be done. There are precedents for making this permanent in all departments and ministries.
Then, in response to the question why it has not been so many years, Programmer Md Tahniatul Islam said, after the transfer of manpower in 2015, junior colleagues who joined the Directorate in 2019 got their jobs permanentized in a short time. On the other hand, our regularization has not been completed in 9 long years. In 2019, the High Court ordered to complete the job regularization process of the project’s manpower in the shortest possible time, but it was not completed during the tenure of the previous government. It is possible to penetrate the secret of such a long process of carrying out this secretarial work without understanding the laws and regulations through an ACC investigation.
He also said that already our colleague Abdul Hannan died in an accident. As the secretarial activities of regularization and permanentizing were not completed on time, his widow and orphans did not get any government benefits. Which is very inhumane.
According to sources, since 2008, the promotion and spread of ICT in field level manpower and educational institutions started through 64 project, 50 senior officers of that project were later appointed through open examination in Basic ICT and Bangla Gov Net project which started from 2011. Based on the opinion of Public Administration, Ministry of Finance and Secretary Committee, the project manpower was transferred to the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology on 1st July 2014 and 1st July 2015 after the completion of the respective projects for public interest and the needs of the country. But after 10/11 years of employment in revenue sector due to extreme discrimination against them, their jobs were not made permanent. Note that the transferred officers, grade 9 gazetted officers and those on revenue pay and regular revenue scale are getting the benefit of pay increment from the time of transfer. After completing their basic training in BPATC in 2015-2016 itself, their jobs are not regularized and permanent. In this situation, the transferred officers informed the authorities for regularization and permanentization of their jobs by taking initiative to publish new recruitment circulars. The authorities assured them that the necessary secretarial activities for their regularization would be completed soon. But the transferred officers filed a case when they took the initiative to appoint new officers without regularizing and permanentizing their jobs.
In 2019, the High Court ordered that the regularization process of the transferred officers be completed at the earliest. Meanwhile new officers joined and were made permanent after two years but the secretarial process of project officers was not completed till July 2024. As a result, clearly the transferred officers were subjected to extreme discrimination. Regularization of posts of transferred officers in 2023 based on application and request of transferred officers so far, all annual confidential applications (though 3-year application is sufficient), police verification and recommendation of Bangladesh Public Works Commission. Regularization was done in 2023 but regularization files were withheld on various pretexts with extreme discrimination against them. Last August 13, 2024 Director General signed the permanentization file and sent it to the ICT Department. On August 14, 2024, the Secretary to the ICT Department signed the long pending permanentization file of the transferred officers. Then some officials who joined in 2019, fearing to lose their seniority, started a smear campaign by blocking the Director General of the ICT Directorate with false and baseless claims.
