The Directorate General of Healt Services is reportedly trying to hurriedly recruit people for more than 2,000 third and fourth class vacancies in the health sector as the current government nears the end of its tenure.
The DGHS has fixed November 22 for the written examination for filling up 1,1,40 vacancies in 18 districts. Sources said the results would be published within 48 hours of the written tests and the viva voce would begin within a week.
Reportedly, it has already received more than 60,000 applications against those 1,1,40 posts in 48 different categories.
The health directorate has also plans for taking recruitment tests on the same date for 1,020 vacant posts of sub assistant community medical offers (SACMO) in the grassroots level.
The initial plan, however, was to recruit 2,200 people; but the DGHS could not do so because of a High Court ruling following the filing of a writ.
The writ was filed by a group of students who graduated from the technical education board.
They accused the DGHS of ignoring them in the SACMO recruitment because they had passed from the technical education board.
The High Court, however, has recently given permission to the DGHS to recruit for 1,020 SACMO posts.
Seeking anonymity, a DGHS high official told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have had bitter experiences in the past while lingering with the recruitment process.
We spent more than Tk10m for the recruitment tests to appoint 915 third and fourth class employees in nine districts. But we could not finish the recruitment as the High Court had imposed a six-month ban.
The ban was imposed following bribery allegations.”
The written test for recruiting those 915 people was held on April 26. The viva voce ended August 26. But the DGHS failed to finalise the results because of huge pressure of recommendations from influential individuals.
Dr Md Shahnewaz, director (administration) of DGHS, told the Dhaka Tribune: “It is true that we are planning to recruit about 2,200 employees in different districts very soon because we had been facing serious manpower crisis.
Unfortunately, all our initiatives to recruit manpower have failed because of the High Court ban.”