817 primary school teacher recruits await appointment letters as verification continues: Milon

Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon says 817 candidates selected for government primary school teaching jobs have yet to receive appointment letters as verification checks continue.

The process will run until Oct 1, after which the government will determine how many of the remaining candidates can be appointed, he said.

Milon was speaking to reporters on Monday after a National Steering Committee meeting at the education ministry ahead of World Teachers' Day.

Appointment letters for assistant teachers began to be issued on Sept 24 after an eight-month wait, but hundreds of candidates complained that they had been left out.

Some have expressed anger on social media, while candidates who did not receive appointment letters have staged sit-ins in Dhaka's Shahbagh over the past two days.

Milon said the process was not yet complete and criticised "misleading" media reports about the issue.

"I have seen some media outlets publish misleading reports, which created unrest. But no one looked into where the issue actually stood," he said.

Around 1 million candidates applied for the recruitment examination under the previous interim government, according to the minister. About 69,000 passed the written test and 14,384 were eventually selected.

Of those, 530 did not submit final applications, possibly because they had taken jobs elsewhere, Milon said.

That left the government with final applications from 13,854 candidates.

However, officials found while issuing appointment letters that verification had not been completed for some candidates, while address information had changed for others.

Milon said the outstanding information was arriving gradually and the number of unresolved cases had now fallen to 817.

"As of today, 817 remain. Verification results, addresses and other information are coming in gradually."

He added that the government was reviewing the outstanding cases and would continue to receive verification and address information until Oct 1.

"We simply do not know whether the final number will be 20, 50 or 100," he said.

Asked whether political identity or a candidate's home area would be considered during verification, as had allegedly happened under previous governments, Milon did not directly address the question.

He said verification was a standard part of the government recruitment process.