Debate on civil service reform
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Qazi Azad
THE civil servants are no longer strong pillars in the country's public administration that they should receive all the beatings for bad governance. They are no more the head of their respective ministries. The deputy commissioners and the superintendents of police are also no longer the effective head of district public administration and the head of district police.
The situation during the brief period of the current caretaker government may be different. But the problem is: One warm day in the winter does not herald the spring. The administrative culture during the last few decades was that any officer on transfer to any ministry had to be informally accepted at first by its top notch, usually the political head of the ministry, for the transfer to take effect and his or her joining letter to be accepted. He or she was no entity to automatically deserve a place in the ministry on the strength of the transfer order, issued usually by the Ministry of Establishment.
Officers considered for posting as deputy commissioner and superintendent of police to a district had to receive the prior unofficial blessing of the local influential MP or Minister-in-charge of the district, whoever was mightier in respect of connections with the real power, to get these respectable postings. But they should have automatically got such postings as per their service rules. Even any lower level official could not expect to have a posting, like officer in-charge of a police station or upazila nirbahi officer, materialised without such an advance welcome nod.
In that flawed administrative culture, even if many civil servants allowed themselves to be politicised, as being widely criticised for now, they cannot be squarely blamed for it. Politicisation did not always reward them uniformly. Politicising the self for advancement under one regime also meant choosing to toe the line of the party in power blindly and to hang under the next regime with the posting as an officer on special duty in the ministry of establishment, a posting that ensures no work but pay. It could lead to even graver uncertainties including the possibility of forced retirement and, in the worst case, termination from service on some framed charges.
The worst condemnation of termination meant throwing the officer concerned into a situation when he or she had to worry how to collect enough money to engage a reputed lawyer to file a writ petition with the High Court for seeking remedy. In a country where most honest officers are clowns, who remain suited and booted but have their purses swelled more with ordinary papers than currencies, being thrown into that kind of a situation means being slow poisoned with a chemical that would cause painful side-effects than hasten death.
Compare the monthly pay packet of an officer of Bengal Civil Service at the entry level, which was Rs 125 in 1946, with that of the pay packet of an officer of the Bangladesh Civil Service now, which is Tk 6800 plus 45 per cent house rent. In respect of purchasing power, the money then was good enough for a monthly saving of Rs 60 or more after a luxurious living and for buying a five katha plot in a good location in the Dhaka city every fourth or fifth year. It was also good for sending the children -- six or ten, to the best local educational institutions of the time including one or two to Oxford or Cambridge at the far-end. Today's most of the well established, best educated and well reputed people of the old generation in this country are sons and daughters of former civil servants.
But the Bengal Civil Service was not the ICS, the British Indian Civil Service. It was a sub-ordinate civil service whose equivalent does not exist in Bangladesh. The EPCS or the East Pakistan Civil Service during erstwhile Pakistan was its equivalent. Its basic pay was Rs 375 in 1970. The CSP or the Civil Service of Pakistan was the ICS-equivalent of Pakistan and its monthly pay at the entry point was Rs 500 in the same year. Assess the purchasing power of those amounts, Rs 375 and Rs 500, at that time when one two-roomed flat with other provisions in a good location in Dhaka city could be rented for Rs 125 to 150. The same can be rented now for Tk 6000 to 7000, if not more. Then one kg best quality rice used to be sold at Rs 0.75, and course flour at Rs 0.37, beef at Rs 2.0, mutton at Rs 2.50 and a big hilsha, weighing about two kgs or more, at Rs 2.50 or Rs. 2.75. Think about the cost of living now, which keeps soaring at the turn of every year, recently every week or day.
In the recent years, civil servants prefer to marry working ladies to mend ways with the earning of both husband and wife. It causes the upbringing and education of their children to suffer. The grown-up children of honest civil servants, who attend colleges and universities, now engage themselves often in private tuition to collect their education expenses and pocket money. Many of them complete their tertiary education in state-run general public colleges if seats in public universities do not become available. Many civil servants can't afford to send their children to private universities where admission is easy but education is costly. But the standard of education in public colleges has sunk like boats gone down in turbulent rivers. That means, many of today's civil servants would not see their own children have entered into the civil services. If that is an added pressure on them to become corrupt, who is blame?
Public university teachers and employees have so arranged under an arrangement that their children get some preference in the matter of admission in their universities. By doing so, they have enhanced the future prospect of their children significantly. Civil servants enjoy no such privilege or one that could assure them about or at least enhance the prospect of entry of their children into civil services.
An employee in a state-owned bank including the Bangladesh Bank can receive without collateral and at the nominal bank rate of interest a house-building loan from the bank ranging from Tk 1.0 million to Tk 2.5 million depending on rank on completion of several years of service. Whereas, the cabinet secretary to the government, the highest post in the civil service, would not receive more than Tk 0.3 million as the same loan from the government, in spite of the rate of interest applicable being much higher than the bank rate. Can you have your coat suitably cut to fit your size if your cloth is short? The nation's civil services suffer from that sort of a crisis now.
Chief Adviser (CA) Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, a retired civil servant, recently exhorted civil servants to be imbued with honesty, integrity, neutrality and rise above corruption. The same counsel was recurrently showered upon every batch of trainee civil servants at the BPATC, where the CA also repeated it. But those civil servants, who became or would become corrupt, perhaps recollect Alexander Pope more often. "I fell into grief and began to complain. I looked for a friend but I sought him in vain. Companions were shy, acquaintances were cold. They gave me good counsels but dreaded their gold", the pope who was a poet wrote. Being a churchman, Alexander Pope stated in the same poem that he relied on God and his right hand. "Let them go, I exclaimed", he wrote, "I have a friend at my side to lift me and aid me whatever betide. To trust to this world is to build castle on the sand, I shall trust but in Heaven and my good right hand."
But civil servants are no churchmen. Nor is it perhaps desirable in this age of secularism that they be so in spirit. So to imbibe honesty and integrity in them, the realities on the ground must be so created that these would assure them a good future and inspire a sense of security in them. There should be a recognition that the quality of public administration does not depend on the number of civil servants, as the standard of food not on the number of cooks, but on their quality.
Administrative decentralisation of the early 1980s, which saw bifurcation of the old 19 districts into 64 new districts and upgradation of the old thanas, each of which had one junior police official as the officer-in-charge of the police station and a circle officer as the administrative head, created the need for and posting of many civil servants. But what could actually ensure better quality of public administration was ignored. Instead of bifurcation, if the pay of the civil servants of the old districts would have been enhanced three times, the pressure on the economy of the pay rise would have been the same as that of the decentralisation, but the commitment of the civil servants to service and the quality of governance would have gone up. On an objective review now, it would appear that the quality of governance deteriorated and corruption went up from that time.
While insisting on reform to enhance the quality of governance, we may recall that the constitution of every country, which is supposed to be the basic foundation of all reforms, is not flawed with major lapses. But all countries do not enjoy equally good governance although their recorded articulations in favour of it are almost similar. The problem is that all nations could not and did not raise and maintain good cooks of the public administration through farsighted policy measures. Many of them have raised and reared crooks instead, with wrong policy decisions.
The development dimension of public administration was never as extensive as being handled now by today's poorly paid civil servants.
The ICS officers of British India mostly wallowed in the sun, went on hunting, played tennis or golf and conducted themselves majestically having imperial connections with no accountability to the natives. The CSPs were no big success in Pakistan in development administration. Find out why Pakistan was fragmented in 1971 amid complaints about regional disparity and why Bangladesh until now remains a least developed country.
Blanket accusation of corruption and incompetence against the civil servants will only hurt them and reduce the attraction of the civil service to today's talented young educated people. Who then would serve as good mechanics of governance to prop up Bangladesh? The civil service reform in this country should be the number one priority and it should consider addressing all the issues, raised above. Otherwise, there would be no big change in the condition and quality of public administration.
THE civil servants are no longer strong pillars in the country's public administration that they should receive all the beatings for bad governance. They are no more the head of their respective ministries. The deputy commissioners and the superintendents of police are also no longer the effective head of district public administration and the head of district police.
The situation during the brief period of the current caretaker government may be different. But the problem is: One warm day in the winter does not herald the spring. The administrative culture during the last few decades was that any officer on transfer to any ministry had to be informally accepted at first by its top notch, usually the political head of the ministry, for the transfer to take effect and his or her joining letter to be accepted. He or she was no entity to automatically deserve a place in the ministry on the strength of the transfer order, issued usually by the Ministry of Establishment.
Officers considered for posting as deputy commissioner and superintendent of police to a district had to receive the prior unofficial blessing of the local influential MP or Minister-in-charge of the district, whoever was mightier in respect of connections with the real power, to get these respectable postings. But they should have automatically got such postings as per their service rules. Even any lower level official could not expect to have a posting, like officer in-charge of a police station or upazila nirbahi officer, materialised without such an advance welcome nod.
In that flawed administrative culture, even if many civil servants allowed themselves to be politicised, as being widely criticised for now, they cannot be squarely blamed for it. Politicisation did not always reward them uniformly. Politicising the self for advancement under one regime also meant choosing to toe the line of the party in power blindly and to hang under the next regime with the posting as an officer on special duty in the ministry of establishment, a posting that ensures no work but pay. It could lead to even graver uncertainties including the possibility of forced retirement and, in the worst case, termination from service on some framed charges.
The worst condemnation of termination meant throwing the officer concerned into a situation when he or she had to worry how to collect enough money to engage a reputed lawyer to file a writ petition with the High Court for seeking remedy. In a country where most honest officers are clowns, who remain suited and booted but have their purses swelled more with ordinary papers than currencies, being thrown into that kind of a situation means being slow poisoned with a chemical that would cause painful side-effects than hasten death.
Compare the monthly pay packet of an officer of Bengal Civil Service at the entry level, which was Rs 125 in 1946, with that of the pay packet of an officer of the Bangladesh Civil Service now, which is Tk 6800 plus 45 per cent house rent. In respect of purchasing power, the money then was good enough for a monthly saving of Rs 60 or more after a luxurious living and for buying a five katha plot in a good location in the Dhaka city every fourth or fifth year. It was also good for sending the children -- six or ten, to the best local educational institutions of the time including one or two to Oxford or Cambridge at the far-end. Today's most of the well established, best educated and well reputed people of the old generation in this country are sons and daughters of former civil servants.
But the Bengal Civil Service was not the ICS, the British Indian Civil Service. It was a sub-ordinate civil service whose equivalent does not exist in Bangladesh. The EPCS or the East Pakistan Civil Service during erstwhile Pakistan was its equivalent. Its basic pay was Rs 375 in 1970. The CSP or the Civil Service of Pakistan was the ICS-equivalent of Pakistan and its monthly pay at the entry point was Rs 500 in the same year. Assess the purchasing power of those amounts, Rs 375 and Rs 500, at that time when one two-roomed flat with other provisions in a good location in Dhaka city could be rented for Rs 125 to 150. The same can be rented now for Tk 6000 to 7000, if not more. Then one kg best quality rice used to be sold at Rs 0.75, and course flour at Rs 0.37, beef at Rs 2.0, mutton at Rs 2.50 and a big hilsha, weighing about two kgs or more, at Rs 2.50 or Rs. 2.75. Think about the cost of living now, which keeps soaring at the turn of every year, recently every week or day.
In the recent years, civil servants prefer to marry working ladies to mend ways with the earning of both husband and wife. It causes the upbringing and education of their children to suffer. The grown-up children of honest civil servants, who attend colleges and universities, now engage themselves often in private tuition to collect their education expenses and pocket money. Many of them complete their tertiary education in state-run general public colleges if seats in public universities do not become available. Many civil servants can't afford to send their children to private universities where admission is easy but education is costly. But the standard of education in public colleges has sunk like boats gone down in turbulent rivers. That means, many of today's civil servants would not see their own children have entered into the civil services. If that is an added pressure on them to become corrupt, who is blame?
Public university teachers and employees have so arranged under an arrangement that their children get some preference in the matter of admission in their universities. By doing so, they have enhanced the future prospect of their children significantly. Civil servants enjoy no such privilege or one that could assure them about or at least enhance the prospect of entry of their children into civil services.
An employee in a state-owned bank including the Bangladesh Bank can receive without collateral and at the nominal bank rate of interest a house-building loan from the bank ranging from Tk 1.0 million to Tk 2.5 million depending on rank on completion of several years of service. Whereas, the cabinet secretary to the government, the highest post in the civil service, would not receive more than Tk 0.3 million as the same loan from the government, in spite of the rate of interest applicable being much higher than the bank rate. Can you have your coat suitably cut to fit your size if your cloth is short? The nation's civil services suffer from that sort of a crisis now.
Chief Adviser (CA) Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, a retired civil servant, recently exhorted civil servants to be imbued with honesty, integrity, neutrality and rise above corruption. The same counsel was recurrently showered upon every batch of trainee civil servants at the BPATC, where the CA also repeated it. But those civil servants, who became or would become corrupt, perhaps recollect Alexander Pope more often. "I fell into grief and began to complain. I looked for a friend but I sought him in vain. Companions were shy, acquaintances were cold. They gave me good counsels but dreaded their gold", the pope who was a poet wrote. Being a churchman, Alexander Pope stated in the same poem that he relied on God and his right hand. "Let them go, I exclaimed", he wrote, "I have a friend at my side to lift me and aid me whatever betide. To trust to this world is to build castle on the sand, I shall trust but in Heaven and my good right hand."
But civil servants are no churchmen. Nor is it perhaps desirable in this age of secularism that they be so in spirit. So to imbibe honesty and integrity in them, the realities on the ground must be so created that these would assure them a good future and inspire a sense of security in them. There should be a recognition that the quality of public administration does not depend on the number of civil servants, as the standard of food not on the number of cooks, but on their quality.
Administrative decentralisation of the early 1980s, which saw bifurcation of the old 19 districts into 64 new districts and upgradation of the old thanas, each of which had one junior police official as the officer-in-charge of the police station and a circle officer as the administrative head, created the need for and posting of many civil servants. But what could actually ensure better quality of public administration was ignored. Instead of bifurcation, if the pay of the civil servants of the old districts would have been enhanced three times, the pressure on the economy of the pay rise would have been the same as that of the decentralisation, but the commitment of the civil servants to service and the quality of governance would have gone up. On an objective review now, it would appear that the quality of governance deteriorated and corruption went up from that time.
While insisting on reform to enhance the quality of governance, we may recall that the constitution of every country, which is supposed to be the basic foundation of all reforms, is not flawed with major lapses. But all countries do not enjoy equally good governance although their recorded articulations in favour of it are almost similar. The problem is that all nations could not and did not raise and maintain good cooks of the public administration through farsighted policy measures. Many of them have raised and reared crooks instead, with wrong policy decisions.
The development dimension of public administration was never as extensive as being handled now by today's poorly paid civil servants.
The ICS officers of British India mostly wallowed in the sun, went on hunting, played tennis or golf and conducted themselves majestically having imperial connections with no accountability to the natives. The CSPs were no big success in Pakistan in development administration. Find out why Pakistan was fragmented in 1971 amid complaints about regional disparity and why Bangladesh until now remains a least developed country.
Blanket accusation of corruption and incompetence against the civil servants will only hurt them and reduce the attraction of the civil service to today's talented young educated people. Who then would serve as good mechanics of governance to prop up Bangladesh? The civil service reform in this country should be the number one priority and it should consider addressing all the issues, raised above. Otherwise, there would be no big change in the condition and quality of public administration.