Bangladesh Bank has been suffering from acute shortage of manpower which is assumed to hamper the central bank’s monitoring and supervision on the large number of financial institutions of the country, experts said.

Concerned sources said a total of 387 posts of assistant directors and more than 1000 posts of class II officers are currently vacant at Bangladesh Bank.

Sources at the Human Resources Department (HRD) of the central bank said the recruitment of 100 assistant directors is currently under process, but staffing in class II positions remained closed since 2003.

Highly placed source at the HR department informed that the recruitment of class II officers remained closed since the World Bank suggested the central bank authorities to recruit more class I officers instead of class II employees.

AKM Mohiuddin Azad, acting general manager of the human resources department of Bangladesh Bank, said as per the bank’s requirement, many posts have been created in various departments several times, but filling up the vacant positions has become very hard due to various constraints.

Moreover, on an average 150 officers at different levels go on retirement every year, creating new vacuum at the bank, he added.

Arif Hossain Khan, joint director at the BB’s recruitment wing, told daily sun that the workload at the central bank has increased four to five times over the years but the manpower has not increased accordingly.

Experts feel that the quantity of job positions in different departments of Bangladesh Bank was created long back when there were only 13 to 15 banks in the country, but currently the context has totally changed. The number of scheduled banks and non-banking financial institutes has increased manifold and supervision of all the financial institutions has become so hard for Bangladesh Bank.

On an average, the commercial banks open more than 100 branches each year, so time has come to reassess the numbers of posts in the important departments in the central bank, keeping the existing banking scenario actively in consideration, experts opined.

Sources at the central bank’s recruitment wing said the recruitment process of 100 assistant directors (general) six officers in research wing, 13 assistant directors (statistics), 13 officers in computer program and maintenance department, seven medical officers, and some other officials in cash department are underway.

The central bank will publish another job advertisement next week to appoint more assistant directors (general side), sources said.

Source: The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 15th Dec 2011