Irregularities in regularisation: Forest guards in jeopardy
Mostafa Jamal Uddin Talukdar started working for the Forest Department as a forest guard in 1987. He has been continuing his service in the same post for the last 33 years without a single promotion.
One morning, he went to work and found out that a junior of his, who joined in 2014, has been promoted to the forester's post. Now Mostafa was a junior to his newly-promoted colleague.
He is not the only one.
The discrimination came to the fore following the regularisation of forest guards. Mostafa, along with 1,500 forest guards, was regularised in August 2016, after years of being in the service.
On the other hand, those who joined the department in 2014 were regularised at the beginning of 2016, creating discrimination in the hierarchy.
Their regularisation was delayed by the divisional head although it is mandatory to regularise an employee after two years of service.
In April 2016, the Forest Department in a letter asked the divisional heads across the country for the updated service book and ACR (annual confidential report) of the forest guards to facilitate their promotion.
The letter asked the divisional heads to issue the regularisation order on May 30, 2016.
Due to the late regularisation of the old employees compared to the new ones, the juniors now belong to grade 15, two notches higher than the 1,500 forest guards who remain in grade 17.
Mostafa Jamal, also the president of Bangladesh Forest Guard Welfare Association, told this correspondent that the callousness of the authorities led to this complication and deprived them of their due promotions.
"The divisional heads are refusing to take responsibility, and they are nonchalant about it. Such a situation will break down the chain of command in the department," he said.
Mostafa also said they approached everyone, including the chief conservator of forests, the minister and the standing committee chair, but to no avail.
"We would like to draw the attention of the prime minister now. This is our only hope. If we fail to get a solution, we will have no other option than resigning," he added.
Contacted, Amir Hossain Chowdhury, chief conservator of forests, told this correspondent that he does not know why pervious officials did not regularise the forest guards in due time.
"Our hands are tied as per the Regularisation and Seniority Deciding Regulation-2005. There is no scope for us to go beyond the regulation," he added.
When informed about the High Court ruling that declared the regulation of 2005 to be unlawful, the top boss of the department said he was not aware of the ruling.
When asked why the letter asking the divisional heads to send the updated service book and other necessary information for the regularisation of forest guards was not followed, he said there are issues which may arise while updating the service books.
"If anyone can show me that there was a deviation in following the procedure during regularisation, there are scopes to rectify it," he added.
As per Forest Guard Welfare Association, 2,000 forest guards were recruited from 1982 to 1990. Only 500 out of them received promotions. The fate of the rest has been uncertain since then.