Tk 1.5cr a month goes to pay 1,000 excess staff

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The National University (NU) is spending about Tk 1.5 crore a month in salaries and allowances of over 1,000 officials and employees recruited unnecessarily through a fake advertisement in 2004.

Before these recruitments, the university used to spend Tk 15 lakh a month in salaries of its 600 officials and employees. Now Tk 2.25 crore is needed to pay salaries of the 1,863 staffs of the university, sources in the NU said.

“Yes, many additional staffs were recruited during the tenure of the then vice chancellor (VC) Prof Aftab Ahmed, and for this a huge amount of money is now going down the drain every month. Still, we could not provide office rooms for 450 employees,” incumbent VC Prof Syed Rashidul Hasan said when contacted.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) in a probe recently detected huge irregularities in recruitments at the NU, and that over 1,000 staffs were recruited unnecessarily. And most of them even do not have office rooms.

The UGC probe report said 176 teachers, 304 officials and 709 employees totalling 1,189 were recruited during the tenure of Prof Aftab from July 2003 to July 2005.

Of them, 176 teachers and 12 officials were recruited according to rules while 1,001 staffs were recruited through a fake advertisement, the probe found.

The NU authorities showed that the 1,001 staffs were recruited through an advertisement published in the English daily The Independent on September 15, 2004 and Bangla daily Ajkal on September 11, 2004.

But The Independent in a letter signed by its managing director said no employment notice of the NU was printed or published in the daily on September 15, 2004.

Moreover, the High Court in a ruling on February 25 this year said documents submitted by the NU, including advertisement in The Independent and Ajkal, were fake and baseless. Following this, NU lecturer M Hafizur Rahman filed a case with Joydevpur Police Station in Gazipur on April 16 challenging legality of the recruitment of staffs through fake advertisement.

The fake advertisement also contained gross irregularities. “The number of posts and age limits of the candidates were not mentioned in it with the motive of recruiting staffs at will,” a top official of the NU said.

The unnecessary recruitments were made during the rule of the BNP-led alliance on political considerations, for nepotism or on payment of huge bribes by candidates, sources said.

The recruitments were made even in important posts like deputy registrar, assistant registrar, network administrator, senior programme officer, maintenance engineers, programme officers, assistant chief medical officer, senior section officer, law officers, assistant programmer, section officer, audit officer, physical instructor, assistant section officer and sub-technical officer.

The UGC probe report also mentioned that recruitment during the tenure of Prof Aftab did not follow the district quota.

In a related development, a syndicate comprising the staff recruited under false advertisement is now trying to secure legality for their illegal recruitment.

The UGC submitted its report to the education ministry but no stern action is yet to be taken due to strong lobbing by the syndicate with top officials of the ministry, sources in the ministry said.

UGC Chairman Prof Nazrul Islam said the government should take up the issue quickly as the NU is facing huge financial loss due to unnecessary staffs.

“We can only submit a probe report on any irregularities in a university, but the education ministry has to take action in this regard. But it is yet to do so in case of unnecessary recruitments in NU. UGC has already formed a committee which will again probe such recruitments,” he told The Daily Star.

NU VC Prof Rashidul said the university authorities could not take any decision about recruitments under fake advertisement because a case is now pending.

Meanwhile, 1,700 NU-affiliated colleges across the country are now suffering due to inadequate number teachers.

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