Don't make a norm out of retrospective promotions for retired officers
It is surprising that the government would seek to replicate rather than reject a controversial move that saw it award retrospective promotions to retired bureaucrats who had allegedly been deprived of promotions during the 15-year rule of Awami League. According to a report by this daily, the government is set to promote several hundred retired officials from non-admin cadres, following its move last December to award post-retirement promotions to 764 officers from the admin cadre. If this is a response to any pressure to balance out the provision of "compensations" among all cadres, it is the wrong kind of response. It should not have happened. If anything, the earlier move that created the scope for this one should have been rolled back.
Unfortunately, what we're witnessing is the institutionalisation of a manifestly partisan practice that offers no benefit to the taxpayers, as those receiving "compensations" are no longer in service. Instead, it only puts additional strain on public funds. As reported before, the last round of retrospective promotions has added Tk 42 crore in additional expenditure, not to mention the enhanced pensions to be provided for the rest of their lives. Currently, a list of around 400 retired non-admin cadre officials is under review. If all or a significant number of them get through the selection process, how much more money will be wasted?
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The logic here is simple: if promotions are meant to reward merit and service, how can they be handed out to retired officers whose performances can neither be evaluated nor used to the benefit of citizens in the present? Apparently, there is little transparency around the criteria being used for granting these promotions, making public administration experts question it. Some have pointed out that the government has taken no steps to revoke undeserved promotions granted in the past, which undermines any moral ground it might have had in awarding delayed promotions. Any solution to perceived injustices, therefore, must lie in structural reform—with an eye on the future—not ad hoc compensations. But repeating moves like this only raises questions about the sincerity of the current top brass.
We urge the government to immediately halt this process. Retrospective promotions for retired officials must not become the new norm. Instead of creating new problems, the government should focus on addressing concerns over some of its decisions regarding promotions and placements. We have, for example, seen how it enabled the persistence of supernumerary promotions—another legacy of the Awami regime—again in the name of addressing grievances for past injustices. We must fix such systemic flaws in line with the proposals of the Public Administration Reform Commission so that a truly merit-based, service-focused administration can be formed.
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