POSITIONS up to the senior assistant secretary in ministries and divisions are reserved for administrative cadre officials. Other cadre officials can get themselves posted there as deputy secretaries. They can continue as joint secretaries and in superior positions until retirement. However, once they have come to serve the ministries after being deputy secretaries, they cannot get back to their directorate or department to be posted at any level of positions in those offices.
Under this arrangement, officials from other cadres except for the administration cadre become eligible to enter ministries and divisions as deputy secretaries after about 15 years of service in their own cadre. By this time, they are well set in government services. When they become deputy secretaries, they are to start their career anew in another environment. In contrast, administration cadre officials, having served either as assistant secretaries or senior assistant secretaries, get the opportunity to learn what the ministries do before entering their mid-level careers. Lateral entrant deputy secretaries from cadre officials other than administrative cadre are now much less in number than officials from administration cadre, because they, along with former secretariat cadre officials, were the only officers serving the ministries and divisions. Now both cadres have become one. The economic cadre has also joined in under one banner.
Most of the officials in other cadres do not opt to become deputy secretaries. They prefer to continue in their respective cadre because of their long-standing initial orientation with the work in the mother cadre. Some cadre officials such as police service officials seldom exercise their option to come as deputy secretaries because by that time they find a better prospect in their cadre. The positions reserved for other cadre officials are quite enough, considering the number of officials who exercise their option to become deputy secretaries.
The switchover of a career in the middle of one鈥檚 service life creates a vacuum of expertise in the mother cadres left by the prospective candidates for the post of deputy secretaries. On the other hand, they are to start fresh in another career. Thus, this switch creates a waste of human resources. Secondly, jobs in ministries and divisions are quite different from jobs in the directorates or field offices. Ministry officials are to learn a number of matters. These are all technicalities of ministry jobs. If anything special about a directorate comes, officials from the directorate are to provide help for the ministry desk, branch or wing concerned. Lateral entrants in ministries and divisions feel somewhat shaky in dealing with the matters. This is the reason the top administration of a ministry is sometimes found reluctant to accept the joining of a deputy secretary coming from other cadres. An official from the administration cadre who has no experience in serving in ministries or divisions also faces this antagonism.
Administration cadre officials are recruited, trained and controlled in a way that they can meet the demand of the jobs in the ministries as well as field administration offices. But in the case of officials recruited for other cadres, they are only oriented for what they need for their initial cadre. The tradition of a cadre is very important for a government servant as the practice and procedure of newly recruited officials linger long because of young age and fresh mind. Thus, the aptitude required for a ministry official may not tally with the practice and procedure of work in the initially chosen cadres of lateral entrant deputy secretaries coming from other cadres. The majority of deputy secretaries are, therefore, reserved for the officials who have previous experience working in ministries and divisions. This strength also includes the officials who may be promoted as deputy secretaries. If this allocation is squeezed, the promotion of officials serving in the administration cadre and former non-cadre officials will face constraints.
People have little interest in this tug of war as they know citizens鈥� services receivable from them will remain the same despite changes. There is little difference between an administrator, an engineer, a physician or a revenue official in this respect. Dispensation of services to people by non-administrative cadre officials is not so prompt and friendly that people can expect them to provide services quickly when they are in ministry positions. It is rather the opposite of what is expected by people. So, people rightly believe that the fallout between contending groups of government officials has no bearing on people鈥檚 fortune.
A long-standing system had been in practice peacefully. Why should a change be proposed to invite a situation in which there is no prospect of services delivery being prompt and dynamic? The state machinery should not be used in anyone鈥檚 group interest. A status quo should be maintained about paltry affairs not amounting to hardcore concern for miscarriage of justice and equity, but which may invite feud and disunity among working hands serving the government.
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Gazi Miznur Rahman, a former civil servant, is a writer.