People's perception is that the civil service in the country has lost its inherent qualities like efficiency, honesty and impartiality. The chief adviser's asking the top bureaucrats for remedying the people's lack of trust in the civil servants is largely reflective of the people's perception.

The following factors may be considered primarily responsible for the decline in efficiency of the civil servants of the country.

First, Public Administration Reform Commission (PARC) in its report (June-2000) has opined that adoption of a well-conceived recruitment policy lies at the core of an efficient civil service.

A sound recruitment policy puts premium on merit rather than on any other consideration. Bangladesh largely follows a closed entry system where officers at the entry level of 29 cadre services of Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) are recruited directly through open competitive examinations.

The recruitment system is tilted towards quotas. Only 45 percent are recruited on the basis of merit and the rest on district and other quota basis. As a result, less meritorious candidates get preference over meritorious ones.

Second, Public Service Commission (PSC), which is responsible for conducting tests and examinations for the selection of suitable candidates for appointment to the service of the republic has, on many occasions, failed to withstand the pressure of the party in power to recommend appointment of candidates to various cadres in BCS cadres on political consideration.

The situation worsened in the nineties and reached an-all time high in the immediate past BNP-led alliance rule.

Third, many officers appointed to various cadres in the BCS do not have proper knowledge of English language. As a result of their poor knowledge in English language, they find it difficult to efficiently handle cases like corresponding with foreign countries and development partners, preparing projects to be financed by the development partners and negotiating with them terms and conditions for financing such projects, representing the government in inter-governmental meetings and in regional and international bodies.

Fourth, retirement of officers of the last batch of erstwhile Central Superior Services of Pakistan and East Pakistan Civil Service from the senior and top echelons of the administration and filling up their positions with BCS officers having comparatively less experience has created a gap of efficient and effective officers in the administration.

It is a fact that corruption is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. But, what is important is that corruption has become pervasive in public administration of the country.

The important causes for pervasive corruption in the administration may be as follows:

Firstly, there has been a serious degradation in moral and ethical values in the society. Many people do not care to distinguish between good and bad while amassing wealth.

There is no social resistance to corruption. Society's reticence and/or condoning corruption has encouraged further corruption. This has influenced many civil servants, who are a part of the society, to be corrupt.

Secondly, low salary package, economic insecurity, lure for procuring luxurious amenities of life, shortcomings in government system and procedure, lack of access to information regime etc. make a civil servant corruptible.

Private corporate sector and others in business take advantage of low pay package of civil servants and resorts to illegal methods such as, rewarding the concerned officials for business gains.

Thirdly, ambition for joining politics immediately after retirement leads many senior civil servants to earn huge money through corrupt practices to give money to the political party of his choice for securing nomination and to contest elections to become MPs.

Fourthly, ineffectiveness of the organization such as Anti-Corruption Commission and the defunct Bureau of Anti-Corruption to take action against corrupt civil servants has encouraged many other civil servants to be corrupt.

An analyst writes: "A person is corrupt because it is profitable to be so. If a person perceives that the risk of being punished is larger than the profit earned, he is less likely to be corrupt. If the reward of being honest is lower than that of the punishment, the propensity to or tendency to be corrupt would be higher."

This is equally true for the civil servants.

Bangladesh has inherited the civil service system introduced by the British in the sub-continent. Like Britain, Bangladesh should naturally have politically neutral civil servants.

But the ground realities are different. Most civil servants are divided into two camps following the two main political parties, the BNP and the AL. The question is: why?

First, the bureaucrats recruited by the AL government immediately after independence from amongst the freedom fighters without properly going through the procedure inherited by the PSC of Bangladesh from the erstwhile CPSC of Pakistan and EPSC of East Pakistan came to be identified as pro-AL. Most of these officers received patronage from the AL government of 1996-2001.

Similarly, the bureaucrats recruited during the rule of CMLA and President ZiaurRahman were rewarded by the BNP government (1991-1996) and the BNP-led alliance government (2001-2006) through accelerated promotions and prized postings at home and abroad.

Second, chairmen and members appointed to the PSC on political consideration during the periods of the BNP governments and the AL government in the past 15 years mostly failed to withstand the pressure of the party/alliance in power for recruiting candidates on political considerations to cadre and non-cadre posts.

These civil servants have become staunch supporters of either of these two major parties that patronized their recruitment to civil service.

Third, during the past fifteen years rule of the BNP and the AL, the criteria for promotion to the mid-level and senior-level posts in the Secretariat, commonly known as the seat of the government, were changed several times on political consideration primarily to suit promotion of a particular batch or group of the bureaucrats loyal to the party in power.

When a reasonably neutral bureaucrat found that that promotion was made not on the basis of merit, impartiality and honesty but on political considerations, then he discreetly sided with either of these two major political parties and often with the party in power

Fourth, many civil servants succumbed to political pressure or indulged in partisan politics to hide their inefficiency and corruption.

Fifth, the Public Servants (Retirement) Act-1974 empowers the government to retire a public servant without assigning any reason on his/her completion of 25 years of service.

This act hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of the mid-level and senior bureaucrats. During the past thirty years or so, hundreds of civil servants had fallen victim to this act.

The BNP-led alliance government broke all the past records of retiring civil servants on political considerations under this act. Thus, many mid-level and senior-level civil servants bureaucrats had sided in the past and will continue to side in the future with the party in power to save their job as well as to get contractual appointment on retirement.

Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed's reminding the top bureaucrats that no political party is their master and they are the servants of the republic sounds well. But, do the ground realities speak so?

Who will save the honest, upright and impartial bureaucrats when the CTG hands over power to a political party or political alliance that wins the next general election? I have no doubt that whichever of the two major political parties or political alliances that goes to form the government after winning the election will behave in the way they did while in power in the past fifteen years.

We have to strike at the root of problems in the administration. The CTG will render yeoman's service if it can: (1) depoliticize the appointments in the PSC and other constitutional bodies through a constitutional council; (2) depoliticize appointments of chairman and commissioners in the Anti-Corruption Commission and empower it with necessary powers to fight out corruption in all spheres of national life, including the bureaucracy; (3) repeal the Public Servants (Retirement) Act, 1974; and (4) make legal provision disqualifying public servants from contesting national elections within three years of their retirement.

M Abdul Latif Mondal is a former Secretary to the Government.