Cadre versus non-cadre dispute unsettles Department of Public Health Engineering, anger over promotions

The Department of Public Health Engineering plays an important role in ensuring safe water and sanitation. But a long-running dispute continues inside the department between officers recruited directly through the BCS and officers who came from projects and non-cadre routes, over recruitment, cadre inclusion, seniority and promotion.

The dispute has created dissatisfaction and frustration among the department's officers and staff. It is also affecting the institution's administrative work.

The dispute began over a 2019 notification. In January that year, 95 officers were included in the public health engineering cadre. Within a few months, however, that notification was cancelled.

Later, in 2020, the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (PSC) wrote to the Local Government Division saying no record could be found at the commission of any recommendation for those officers' cadre inclusion.

Earlier, in 2012, the opportunity to include 32 PSC-recommended non-cadre officers in the cadre was rejected for lack of rules and vacant posts. Meanwhile, in 2019, 195 new cadre posts were created in the Department of Public Health Engineering. But it is alleged that the notification creating those posts contained no order giving them retrospective effect.

Later, on 15 June 2022, 90 officers were included in the cadre from dates before they joined the revenue budget. BCS officers claim that, according to a Local Government Division letter of 8 October 2012, those posts did not exist at the relevant time. Their question is how the officers could be included in the cadre from a time when the posts themselves did not exist. It is also alleged that no joining letters were submitted to the ministry after the cadre inclusion order.

The central question of the dispute now is whether the earlier service of officers included in the cadre later will count for seniority and promotion. The dispute has reached the courts.

In 2022, 63 officers were promoted to executive engineer. But a condition was set that a full seniority list be prepared before further promotions. Meanwhile, officers recruited directly through the BCS allege they have long been deprived of promotion, creating professional frustration among them.

Officers allege that 90 project and non-cadre officers from before 2017 were included in the cadre irregularly, without following PSC and government recruitment rules, and were given cadre benefits from before even their inclusion in the revenue budget. The BCS Public Health Engineering Cadre Association has lodged written objections with the government's high levels over the matter.

A BCS officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that under the prevailing rules a regular BCS cadre officer must pass foundation training, the departmental examination and the senior scale examination to be promoted from the ninth grade to the sixth grade (senior scale), and then needs five more years of service experience to qualify for promotion to the fifth grade.

The officer said that during the previous government, posts were created in the Local Government Division and 90 project and non-cadre officers from before 2017 were included in the cadre, with no joining date specified in their 2022 inclusion order. He said that while regular BCS officers remain stuck in the ninth grade even after 10 years of service, 45 of those officers were given retrospective promotion directly to the fifth grade within just three months of cadre inclusion.

Angered BCS officers filed a case in the High Court in 2022 against the decision. The case is still pending, according to the officers concerned. They allege that despite the ongoing case, the officers concerned are enjoying fifth-grade benefits and are even trying to sit the sixth-grade senior scale examination.

Mohammad Firoz Mia, author of a book on service rules, said there is no provision in the rules to give anyone retrospective promotion within just three months of cadre inclusion. He also claimed there is no legal basis for determining seniority in such haste.

Meanwhile, on 19 June 2022, the BCS Public Health Engineering Cadre Association submitted a written application to the then senior secretary at the Prime Minister's Office. Signed by the association's president Bilkis Akhtar and general secretary Ibne Mayaz Pramanik, the application called for amendment of the notification including the 90 officers in the cadre.

The application said 90 assistant engineers were retrospectively included in non-existent cadre posts even before cadre posts were created in 2019, which conflicts with the Bangladesh Civil Service (Engineering Public Health) Composition and Cadre Rules, 1980. It also said two-thirds of the department's cadre posts are meant to be filled by direct recruitment, yet the PSC Secretariat made no recommendation for the retrospective inclusion of the 90.

Several engineers of the department, speaking anonymously, said that because the 90 were given cadre benefits from 18 years before even their revenue-budget inclusion date, many officers including the department's current chief engineer, additional chief engineers and superintending engineers have fallen behind in seniority. Intense dissatisfaction and frustration prevail among them.