The “highly controversial” recruitment of 4,294 third and fourth class employees for the Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP) – which was marred by widespread bribery allegations – has restarted from last week.
The recruitment process had been stopped following a three-month stay order issued by the High Court in September, based on writ petitions filed by a Supreme Court advocate and a candidate.
DGFP officials said the stay order had been cancelled by another High Court judge last week, allowing the DGFP to restart the recruitment process.
Senior officials of the DGFP are now reportedly hurrying to complete the recruitment process, before any further writ is lodged.
It has been learnt that the DGFP had completed both written and viva exams for 51 out of the 61 districts, while the district recruitment committees were taking viva in 10 districts.
Seeking anonymity, a member of the central recruitment committee told the Dhaka Tribune on Monday that the result would be published very soon.
A large number of senior officials and employees of the DGFP told the Dhaka Tribune that the recruitment process saw the largest ever amount of bribery in the history of the DGFP, with the total amount expected to be more than Tk1.5bn.
The size of the bribes allegedly depended on the weight of the posts, with unscrupulous DGFP employees charging candidates Tk800,000-Tk900,000 for the post of family planning assistant, Tk500,000-Tk600,000 for family planning inspector, Tk300,000-Tk350,000 for family welfare visitor and Tk200,000-Tk250,000 for other posts.
Similar allegations were also raised in 2011, the last time the DGFP made recruitments for 6,000 vacant posts.
Sources said different influential people including ministers, secretaries, parliament members, political and doctors’ leaders were behind the bribes, adding that an official who will retire in a month had pocketed the highest amount of money.
Dr Mahbubur Rahman, member secretary of the recruitment committee, termed the allegations “fictitious,” and said: “Allegations of bribery in recruitment are nothing new. We have to bear with this sort of complaints every time we recruit.”
It has been learnt that more than 200,000 candidates sat for the written tests that were held on June 21, 22 and 28, while a total of 12,711 candidates, who came out successful in the written tests, had been selected for a viva-voce for final recruitment.