Effect of contractual appointments in Bangladesh civil service (1991-2011)

Abstract

In spite of having a long history of highly structured bureaucracy of Bangladesh inherited from British-India, at present, the civil service of Bangladesh has lost its image for unscrupulous decisions by the successive governments through over politicization. Over the years, mostly intentionally, all governments have manipulated the civil service for their partisan political interest and to rule the country surviving in power for long. In this regard, they have illegally controlled the personnel administrative matters like recruitment, promotion, transfer, posting, OSD, forced retirement and contractual appointment. Among them, wholesale contractual appointments by the ruling parties have intensified the degree of politicization in administration. Although, all democratic governments of Bangladesh have claimed that they have resorted such practice to retain the smooth service of capable officers having proven professional expertise to fill up vacuum in special circumstances in public interest, but the increasing number of contractual appointments over the decades appears to have been based more on political loyalty of the concerned officials to serve government's narrow political interest. Contractual appointments may have many positive sides, but its negative impacts are pervasive in Bangladesh civil service now. The study has analyzed only the three negative effects of contractual appointments including “Foster Partisan Political Interest”, “Blockage of Promotion” and “Low Level of Morale” which have been measured with several indicators. To build an analytical framework, relevant literatures have been discussed. The study is unique and the major objective of it is to assess the negative effect of contractual appointments in Bangladesh Civil Service. The main research question was how contractual appointments affect negatively in Bangladesh Civil Service. Primary and secondary data have been used for the study. Primary data were collected through in-depth interview and semi-structured questionnaire survey. A total of thirty (30) respondents, fourteen (14) from serving civil servants and sixteen (16) from retired ones, were taken as sample respondents to conduct interview and semi-structured questionnaire survey. And the secondary data were gathered from several newspapers, journals, Bangladesh Gazettes, books, reports, websites, blogs and posts etc. An extensive review of literatures, documents, newspapers and web pages pertained to the contractual appointments, politicization and civil service, was conducted. As the research goes mostly with the qualitative in nature, the collected data were organized and analyzed in a systematic way and the data and findings were presented with detailed analysis and explanation in order to address research questions and fulfill the objectives. From the analysis, it appears that contractual appointments have increased over the years and fostered the partisan attitude among the bureaucrats in administration as the ruling parties have desperately strived to get undue advantages from them, to consolidate the power and to run the country over and over again. To this end, successive governments have superseded one another through intensifying the degree of nepotism & favouritism, political patronage, divisions among civil servants in separate camps in administration. In addition, confrontational politics among political parties, lack of consensus among them on national issues and vulnerable democratic institutions have very close connection with contractual appointments. Such appointments at higher administration have blocked the promotions of hundreds of careerist, efficient and professional bureaucrats as the hierarchy of administration is pyramidal in structure and the tenure of service age of the employees is limited. And thus the frequent blockage of promotions and partisan politics in administration have sharply decreased the morale and productivity of the civil servants. The variables -- the main three negative effects -- of the study are very closely connected to one other, therefore, the measuring indicators to prove them are also intertwined. So, the most striking feature of the variables and indicators is that they influence one another. For example, the variables – ‘foster partisan political interest’ and ‘low level of morale’ -- can be measured by the same indicators. Likewise, the variable – ‘low level of morale’ – may also be measured by the other two variables – ‘blockage of promotion’ and ‘foster partisan political interest’ together with some other indicators. For this reason, several statements and quotations might also have been used in measuring the above variables. In fact, the result of this study provides a snapshot picture of the negative effects of contractual appointments in Bangladesh civil service which may assist a proper policy formulation and implementation to overcome from the deep-rooted problems.