Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that her government will make sure that those who were engaged in vandalism demanding cancellation of quota system in public service recruitment will not get government job in future.
“We’ve the pictures, we’ll place them before the Public Service Commission (PSC) before the viva-voce examinations so that these notorious elements can’t get government jobs,” she said in her introductory speech at the Awami League central working committee meeting at her official residence Ganobhaban on Thursday.
Hasina, however, admitted that there are some allegations about flaws in the quota system.
The PM questioned the merit of the students who had staged rowdy protests. “How can a meritorious student engage in vandalism,” she asked.
“How dare they demand scrapping of the quota for the dependents of the freedom fighters who gave them an independent country,” she said, adding: “The quota provision is also for women, ethnic minority and disabled, which is even guaranteed by the
constitution of Bangladesh.”
She said the anti-liberation forces had engineered the so-called movement for cancellation of the freedom fighters’ quota from the public service.
She said vested quarters are trying to undermine the contribution of the freedom fighters by raising such demand.
“If the freedom fighters had not fought against the Pakistani occupation forces, the independent Bangladesh would not have come into being and there would not have been a Public Service
Commission,” she added.
Under the current BCS examinations system, 30% of the seats are reserved for children of freedom fighters and 10% for women. A further 10% is reserved for districts, 5% for national minorities and 1% for people with disabilities.
Thousands of students came down to the streets in different parts of Bangladesh demanding abolition of quota system and restoration of merit for recruitment in government jobs.
Instead, Hasina ordered the PSC to preferential jobs to the children and grandchildren of the freedom fighters.
Civil society leaders have already decried retention of the quota system for freedom fighters for their children and grandchildren as a ploy to divide the nation and induct politicisation in place of merit in bureaucracy.
About the verdict of International Crimes Tribunal against those who committed crimes against humanity during the war of independence in 1971, Hasina said there is no scope for calling general strike against the verdict.
“How do they call shutdown in the month of Ramadan and kill innocent people? If they are aggrieved they can go to the top court,” she added.
“By enforcing strike, they want to close the income sources of the poor people in the month of Ramadan. Such attempts are tantamount to committing another crime against humanity,” she added.