DSE board spots irregularities in bourse’s HR operations
The board of directors of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has reported irregularities in posting and paying employees at the bourse that have ultimately increased costs amid decreased output.
It has also been reported that a canteen, with the only beneficiaries being stock brokers, is operational at the Motijheel office with subsidies even though the bourse's office has been shifted to Nikunja.
On June 2, the DSE board formed a five-member committee responsible for submitting a human resource assessment of the bourse to realise redundancy costs.
A report was submitted to the board during a meeting held on Monday.
"The DSE is wasting money by carrying a huge number of employees even though there is no need. However, there is a lack of manpower in some important departments," said a member of the committee, preferring anonymity.
And so, the bourse has seen lower output though it depends on FDR interest to run operations, he added.
The main tasks for many staff members are identical and some workers have become redundant as there are 35 personnel under an electrical engineer, said the report.
The team found that 142 staff members in HR were more than necessary and deserve a thorough evaluation to justify the workforce.
On the contrary, there were huge tasks in the over-the-counter department.
Besides, the main task of product and market development of the DSE got negligible attention.
"Some C-suite executives [chief financial officer, chief technical officer, etc] were appointed contractually and they turned into permanent positions later even though their benefits remained higher," said the committee member, who is also a DSE director, adding that this issue arose due to nepotism.
Normally, these posts are filled on a contractual basis in financial institutions, he added.
C-level positions are given on a contractual basis at the DSE. The board decided in 2014 to convert those contractual positions to permanent ones without a proper agenda or analysis and feasibility study, the report said.
Accordingly, the same board recruited the CFO and CTO as regular employees with a new pay scale which was even higher than that of previous contractual positions.
The report also added that the DSE's interests were not protected in the process of turning the positions in question into permanent ones, which is also tantamount to discrimination for other employees of the exchange.
"It also violated the service rules, though it was modified to facilitate the decision," he said.
According to the DSE report, the bourse has its own security department, where permanent security guards are available, yet same care services are contracted and outsourced, which indicates redundancy and needs proper justification.
To analyse the redundancy and irregularity issues, the committee said each division of the DSE needs to be audited thoroughly, properly and separately through special audits with specific charters to identify value addition in terms of the respective roles of the existing workface.
It recommend the verification of the appointment procedures of all employees to see if there are any abnormal practices of nepotism within the DSE.
The committee was formed with five board members, including the DSE's managing director.
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