Shake-up at the top echelon of bureaucracy
When 21 secretary-level functionaries of as many ministries and divisions have to inter-change positions and four get marginalised as OSD, it cannot evidently be seen in the category of the 'routine' as a top official of the government would have us believe. In fact, since the shuffling encompasses nearly half of the total number of ministries and divisions, it is anything but a massive shake-up, almost tectonic in nature.
The size of the re-shuffle at the nearly two-year point of the AL government lends itself to an interpretation that the PM has acted on her oft-repeated displeasure over what she termed bureaucratic sloth taking hold of her government. How far the changes are going to inject dynamism into her governance and service delivery pattern only time can tell. But one thing is for sure, unless she succeeds in impelling her ministers, MPs and party activists to draw a line between the concerns of ruling party and the affairs of governance and cease to meddle in administrative affairs, changing of places at the top of the bureaucracy including the police, can only be of cosmetic effect.
On taking over the reins of administration, the AL government had made ten secretaries into officers-on-special duty (OSD), and with four more made added in the current installment, the total number of OSD stands at 473 to-date. Such a huge number of virtually laid-off officials is a sheer waste of manpower, experience and above all public money, a costly luxury a country such as Bangladesh can ill-afford.
This together with contractual appointment and compulsory retirement galore has been a fixture with power alternating between the two major political parties every five years. Although such changes are sought to be interpreted as attempts at de-politicisation of the administrations by turn; in truth, however, these invariably ended up being politicization -- in perpetuity, so to speak.
Whatever may have been the overt or covert objective behind such shake-ups, the net result has been a sense insecurity pervading the administration, which in turn, bred de-moralisation across the rank and file of the bureaucracy. Another repercussion of all this has been witnessed in the race the officials engaged themselves to ingratiate before the government of the day by giving an unceremonious burial to their professional norms as functionaries of the republic.
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