Don’t ask govt to absorb contractual staffers
The Supreme Court has prohibited all courts from directing the government to absorb contractual employees or officers of projects as permanent employees unless there is a statutory provision to this effect.
In the full text of an order, the SC's Appellate Division has observed that "No court can direct the government or its instrumentalities to regularise the service of the officers and employees of development projects into the revenue budget in the cases where statutory requirements have not been fulfilled. Regularisation cannot be claimed as a matter of right."
"It is a statutory requirement that opportunity shall be given to eligible persons by public notification and recruitment should be according to the valid procedure and appointment should be of the qualified persons found fit for appointments to a post or an office under the government."
A three-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Hasan Foez Siddique came up with the observation in the 18-page full text of the order released recently.
On March 6 this year, the SC bench delivered the short order on this issue after the government filed 62 leave to appeal petitions challenging several High Court verdicts.
The judgements, from 2017 to 2021, directed the government to regularise/absorb the writ petitioners (employees) of a project under the health ministry as the tenure of their contractual services expired.
According to the full text, Md Kamal Hossain and several others had joined a development project titled "Revitalisation of Community Health Care Initiatives in Bangladesh (RCHCIB) as Community Health Care Provider (CHCP)" at different times since 2009 after being selected through proper procedures.
On February 7, 2012, the RCHCIB project director sent a letter to the health ministry, recommending that the project employees be absorbed into the revenue budge. Till date no progress has been made, though the tenure of their contractual services expired.
During the hearing of the petitions, Attorney General AM Amin Uddin informed the SC that the government in the meantime has formulated the Community Clinic Health Assistance Trust Act, 2018, for the officers and employees who were appointed in RCHCIB and the "Community Based Health Care" projects.
And by operation of the said law, services of the RCHCIB project employees have already been placed under the trust and as such the writ petitioners are now its employees, he argued.
In the full text, the SC said, "The officers and employees of 'Revitalisation of Community Health Care Initiatives in Bangladesh' and 'Community Based Health Care' projects who worked until 30 June, 2015, are now the officers and employees of the trust, automatically."
The government is directed to consider the case of the writ petitioners in the light of the provisions in the "Community Clinic Health Assistance Trust Act, 2018".
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