'Quota violation' paves way for more administration cadre officers’ promotion

The government has promoted more officers from the administration cadre than the quota permits, causing disquiet among the public servants in 26 other cadres.

Out of 205 assistant senior secretaries promoted to the post of deputy secretary, only 48 are from cadres other than administration.

According to the government’s rules of 2002 for promotion to deputy secretary, joint secretary, additional secretary and secretary, 75 percent officers to be promoted to deputy secretary must come from administration and the remaining 25 percent from the other 26 cadres.

But of the officers promoted to deputy secretary positions on Sunday, 76.59 percent are from administration and 23.41 percent from the other cadres.

The promotion rules

The quota for promotion to deputy secretary is 75 percent from administration and 25 percent for the other cadres.

# Condition – 1

For promotion, officers will have to have at least 10 years' job experience, including five years in senior scale, in the corresponding cadre. But the five-year condition will not be applicable for officials who got seniority given with retrospective effect.

# Condition - 2

The officers have to complete trainings set by the government and pass the legal and departmental examinations. But an officer who did not get the opportunity for any training will be exempted.

# Condition – 3

The officers will have to get 85 marks in the evaluation. But if no officer suitable for the promotion is found, the 85-mark condition will be relaxed for officers who have fulfilled the previous two conditions.

The government evaluates the officers for promotion to deputy secretary on the basis of 100 marks.

The evaluation marks are 25 marks for educational qualification, 30 marks on average of annual confidential reports on them in last five years, 25 marks for the reports in the previous years, 10 bonus marks for no negative comment in the reports, and 10 more marks for no punishment in office.

Speaking to bdnews24.com, many of the non-administration cadre officials expressed ire over the violation of the quota. But none of them, however, agreed to be named.

One of them expressed anger over the absence of any specific guideline on quota for the promotion of officers of the 26 cadres other than administration.

On Sunday, 15 got promoted from education cadre and six from agriculture while information cadre had only one of its officers elevated.

An information cadre official said, “There is no scope to ask anyone how the promotions were categorised and decisions made, and why 15 from education cadre were promoted. Those who should be asked are controlling everything.”

No officer of the public administration ministry commented on the violation of quota in promotion.

State Minister for Public Administration Ismat Ara Sadiq told bdnews24.com: “The officers who are qualified for consideration for promotion have been promoted.”

She said many were dropped for ‘various’ reasons. “We have certain criteria for promotion and they could not be included because of those criteria.”