The despicable OSD saga
The aberration must be done away with
Nowhere in the world will one come across bureaucrats being paid for doing precious nothing at all but in Bangladesh. And we have also coined a new phrase for such an arrangement, OSD -- officer on special duty. If 'special' duty is a euphemism for doing nothing one wonders what the criteria of performance and the remunerations for 'normal' duty are.
The caretaker government and the administration deserve our compliments for bringing down the number of OSD, from a staggering figure of 758 when it took over the reins of government, an appalling commentary on the state of misgovernance and malfeasance of the powers that be at that time, to 58. This is the lowest in the fifteen years of democratic dispensation in the country.
The OSD statistics are awe inspiring and needs to be taken another glance at. The number of OSD in 1996 when the BNP government relinquished power stood at 355 which came down to 174 when the AL handed over the reins in July 2001, and went up to 758 at the end of the BNP-led alliance tenure in Oct 2005.
In fact the instrument of OSD has been wielded by all the democratically elected governments, in greater or lesser degree. One fails to understand how a government that has the interest of the people at heart would ever think of keeping public servants as a sinecure. Surely the public coffer cannot allow such practice any longer.
But why, after all, does one confront a situation where a large number of government servants are not found any work to do? This is another example of blatant politicisation of the bureaucracy, partly as a means of satisfying the political ego of the government, as well as to keep those they feel are not of the same ilk to have to do anything with either the policy making or the implementation process of the government.
The practice of sending officers on special duty because the political masters have no need for them, for political reason, is abhorrent and should become an anathema. Pubic coffer cannot be used for partisan ends. If an officer is unfit for a particular job there are established means to deal with him or her, but sending that officer on special duty cannot be one.
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