OSD for 16 years!

The government has spent around Tk 65 lakh on an officer, who has not given any service to the nation for the last 16 years.
Strange as it may seem, the person has been an officer on special duty (OSD) all these years.
Mohammad Abdul Kadar had been made an OSD while he was serving as assistant commissioner with the status of senior assistant secretary at Shariatpur Deputy Commissioner's Office in 1997. He still holds the same status.
A government official with the status of senior assistant secretary is paid around Tk 4.80 lakh in salary and benefits a year.
In practice, an OSD has no other duty except for attending office and signing the attendance register. He gets salary and other benefits excluding transport allowance.
A good number of civil bureaucrats are made OSD usually because of political reasons or personal enmity.
But in the case of Kadar, a civil servant of the 1985 batch of Bangladesh Civil Service, the story is different.
He was made an OSD on June 23, 1997 for abnormal behaviour. The authorities brought charges of professional misconduct against him the next year, and they apparently forgot him since then.
Kadar lives alone in a small government flat on Bailey Road. He hardly comes out or talks with others. He doesn't meet anyone, not even his batch mates, and maintains secrecy about his movement.
“I tried to meet him several times but he didn't open the door of his flat. He talked from inside and said if he had opened the door somebody might kill him,” said one of Kadar's batch mate, who is now a deputy secretary.
“He was a very brilliant officer. We never imagined that we would find him in such a condition,” said the bureaucrat asking not to be named.
When The Daily Star reporter called Kadar, who is from Char Fassion in Bhola, over his cell phone, he said he was in Barisal. He refused to talk about his retaining the post of OSD for such a long time.
The public administration ministry officials said Kadar had filed several petitions with the High Court for making him an OSD.
According to the procedure, a medical board is formed to examine an officer with such problems. And the government determines the fate of the officer on the basis of the medical report.
Successive governments have remained silent about Kadar on humanitarian grounds until recently when the public administration ministry decided to form a medical board to examine Kadar.
Abdus Sobhan Sikder, senior secretary of the public administration ministry, said an official cannot continue as an OSD for such a long time.
However, in some cases, one can be kept as an OSD, and paid the salary and benefits on humanitarian grounds, he said.
“The medical board will examine him. His fate will be decided on the basis of the medical report,” he told The Daily Star.
If the officer is found fit he will be brought back in service, otherwise not, Sikder said.
Successive governments have made many civil servants OSDs, and spent crores of taka in their salaries and benefits. This policy has deprived the country of their services for years, and left a negative impact on civil bureaucracy.
A total of 3,605 officials were made OSD between 2004 and 2012 and the nation had to spend Tk 150.9 crore in their salaries and benefits, according to a recent report of the public administration ministry.