The Finance Ministry has recently given its nod to a Home Ministry proposal for creating 4,778 posts in the police force.
Officials said this is part of a plan to recruit 50,000 police personnel to improve the law and order situation in the country.
The approved recruitments and the associated pays and allowances would cost the state coffer around Tk507 crore every year. If all the 50,000 personnel are to be appointed, the government will have to spend Tk10,000 crore annually.
An official said the Finance Ministry has not yet approved another request for a Tk500 crore fund to purchase motor vehicles and build a new police station for these new recruits.
“More than Tk1,000 crore will be monetary pressure on the budget for the next fiscal year,” the official said.
According to Finance Division sources, Finance Minister AMA Muhith signed the summary of the police directorate proposal after returning from the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
The proposal says that the 4,778 include 156 cadre and 664 non-cadre posts. The remaining manpower will be appointed for the Armed Police Battalion (APBn), Gazipur Metropolitan Police, Rangpur Metropolitan Police and the Dhaka Range. Of these, Rangpur will get the highest at 2,370 new recruits.
The Home Ministry will get the necessary approvals from the committee of secretaries and the Public Administration Ministry before making the appointments. The cadre posts will be created under the BCS (Police) Composition and Cadre Rules 1980, the proposal says.
A letter – that the Dhaka Tribune has accessed – sent by Finance Minister Muhith to the Expenditure Control Department reads: “During a meeting in my office, State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and the inspector general of police discussed creating 4,778 and the disbursement of Tk518 crore for procuring motor vehicles.”
The minister’s letter also said that he had not yet given his consent about the procurement of vehicles because he was yet to discuss the matter with the Expenditure Control Department.
In February, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her resolve to bring all militants and terrorists to book and announced that 50,000 people would be appointed in the police force.
Hasina also said that over the last five years, her government had created more than 31,000 new posts, including 614 cadre posts.
A Home Ministry official said the Public Administration Ministry had been processing the creation of 32,563 posts and the Finance Division had approved 4,778 posts.
But the police directorate has not yet sent any proposal regarding the creation of the remaining 13,039 posts, the official said.