Staff Correspondent:

At least 29 percent of government employees are women, says State Minister for Public Administration Farhad Hossain.

He shared the information in a dialogue organised by the Bangladesh Secretariat Reporters Forum on Tuesday.

When asked why women in the country were falling behind in Bangladesh Civil Service exams, the state minister said currently, 11 of the 84 secretaries were women. Also, 75 additional secretaries, 164 joint secretaries and 394 deputy secretaries were women, he said.

“As many as 658 [women] are working as senior assistant secretaries. Besides, seven of the 64 deputy commissioners are women while 151 women are working as UNOs. At least 88 women employees are working as AC of land and one divisional commissioner is a woman.”

“Bangladesh is moving forward when it comes to women’s empowerment. At least 29 percent of our government employees are women,” the state minister said.

The state minister for public administration said that there were more than 1.9 million approved posts in the government offices and 370,447 of them were vacant.

“In the last 10 years, 351 officers from grade 1 to 9 faced complaints. As many as 41 of them received severe punishment while 140 had lighter penalties. In total 181 of them were punished while 170 were acquitted,” Farhad said in response to a reporter’s query.

He brushed aside allegations that the proper policies were not followed for promotion of the government employees. “We follow proper policies for posting and promotion. It always follows the rules,” he said.

“Sometimes, it is said that more government employees get promoted than the original number of posts. You must know that we need to consider a lot of things. Some officers study abroad under different government scholarships. Some of them work in different foreign missions. Besides, a group of officers can take medical leave. We must calculate all those numbers.”

“Logically, we need to promote more officers than the number of posts. Some officers go to PRL [preparation for retirement leave] within a short time. Hence, we need to keep other officers reserved for those posts. Also, if someone falls sick, that post can be taken by another officer,” he said.