BCS, non-cadre, and other jobseekers are in deep despair as the Public Service Commission (PSC) has effectively halted recruitment and promotion exams since the student uprising against the then Awami League government. The PSC, responsible for recruiting various government positions, has faced a complete standstill, affecting hundreds of thousands of jobseekers. The stalling of recruitment processes, including the viva voce for the 44th BCS and evaluations for the 45th BCS, has resulted in a significant backlog. Although the 46th BCS written exam was scheduled for this month, its status remains uncertain. Insiders claim the situation is improving since the interim government led by Prof Muhammad Yunus has taken charge, with hopes for a return to normalcy. PSC officials reported that recruitment was halted during the student protests, leading to the suspension of both cadre and non-cadre exams. Currently, only recruitment and departmental exams are on hold, while some departmental activities continue. The oral exam for the 44th BCS was temporarily suspended after a special PSC meeting during the protests, with a new date to be announced later. The 44th BCS recruitment aims to fill 1,710 positions across various cadres, including administration, police, foreign affairs, and education. Amidst these challenges, Sarjis Alam, coordinator of the anti-discrimination student movement, has called for urgent reforms within the PSC and a swift resumption of job exams. He emphasized that the priorities of the youths who led the uprising must not be forgotten. The PSC is undergoing a reorganization, leading to the resignation of the chairman and 12 members on October 8, 2024, with more expected to follow. On October 9, Professor Dr Mobasser Monem was appointed as the new PSC chairman, alongside four other members, as announced by the Ministry of Public Administration. Initially, the PSC suspended recruitment exams on July 18 due to escalating tensions during the quota reform movement. While the written exam for the 45th BCS was completed, evaluations have stalled, and various recruitment and departmental promotion exams have been delayed. The first half-yearly departmental exam for BCS cadre and non-cadre officers, scheduled for September 14, was postponed, causing further distress for thousands of officers across different cadres. The PSC has not provided a revised schedule for the postponed exams, leading to uncertainties regarding the timely publication of the 47th BCS notice. Although the PSC aims to publish it by November 30, the Ministry of Public Administration has yet to make a decision. Candidates are concerned about potential age exemptions if delays continue.   A candidate for the viva of the 44th BCS told UNB that PSC's stagnation stems from the July uprising, highlighting delays in the gazette for the 43rd BCS, the unfinished viva for the 44th BCS, and uncertainty surrounding the 45th and 46th BCS exams. The candidate lamented the despair faced by hundreds of thousands of job seekers during this period of uncertainty. Another candidate noted that since the new government took over, PSC activities have been completely halted. A meeting on September 30 aimed to establish dates for all postponed BCS exams and restore normalcy, but recent resignations have reignited uncertainty. PSC Secretary Abdullah Al Masud Chowdhury told this correspondent that more resignations are expected soon at the PSC. He acknowledged the stagnation in PSC activities due to the change in government, resulting in a backlog of work. However, he expressed hope for starting the oral exam for the 44th BCS within a month. Regarding the 45th BCS, Chowdhury indicated that evaluations are ongoing, with the possibility of involving a third examiner if discrepancies arise. However, the timeline for starting the written exam for the 46th BCS remains unclear. On the 47th BCS notice, Chowdhury indicated that they are prepared and awaiting a demand letter from the Ministry of Public Administration. He assured that efforts are underway to conduct other recruitment and promotion exams promptly.

A total of 3.70 lakh positions out of 19.151 lakh government jobs remain vacant, Public Administration Minister Farhad Hossain said today. The minister revealed this information during a dialogue organized by the Bangladesh Secretariat Reporters Forum (BSRF). Addressing a question about women lagging behind in the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS), the minister noted that out of 58 secretaries under Public Administration, 11 are women. Besides, there are 75 female additional secretaries, 164 female joint secretaries, 394 female deputy secretaries. Additionally, there are 658 senior assistant secretaries, seven female deputy commissioners, 151 female UNOs, and 88 female AC land officers. State Minister for Public Administration showcaused for violating electoral code of conduct “We are making progress in women empowerment, with women constituting 29 percent of government job holders,” he stated. “In the 35th BCS, 27.95% are female governments officials, in 36th BCS, the number of female officials are 26.22%, in 37th BCS, 24.37% are female officials, 26.91% female officials found in 38th BCS, the rate of female officials in 40th is 26.03% and in 41st BCS the number stands at 26.71%,” he said. In the 29th BCS, 46.81% females were appointed as government officials while the rate surpassed to 49.02% in the 42nd BCS, said the minister. The minister said, even after the cancellation of 10 percent women quota, women are getting recruitment as before. There was no disruption here. From the 40th BCS, there is no quota for women, he said, adding that the rate of women in BCS has not decreased. A total of 26-27 percent women were recommended for each BCS, he said. PM Hasina distributes 'Bangabandhu Public Administration Award to 28 officials, 2 departments   Responding to a question about allegations against 351 government officials from grade-1 to grade-9 over the past ten years, Farhad Hossain said that 41 received severe punishment and 140 received light punishment. In total, 181 officials were punished, while 170 were discharged. Regarding concerns about not maintaining policy in promotions, the minister assured, “Promotions and postings are conducted following proper policies. We have a well-ordered system. It’s important to consider various factors such as officers studying abroad under government scholarships, assignments in embassies abroad, and health issues of some officers. We take all these factors into account. BSRF president Fasih Uddin Mahtab and its general secretary Masudul Haque administered the programme. Over 3.55 lakh posts vacant in public administration: State Minister

Since it became publicly accessible in November last year, ChatGPT – an AI chatbot created by OpenAI Company – has dominated the discourse on the internet and social media. Based on the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3 or GPT-3 language paradigm, ChatGPT is capable of carrying on a conversation, responding to inquiries, producing stories, poems, and comics, as well as resolving challenging programming issues. ChatGPT has also participated in and even passed numerous challenging examinations across the globe including the Wharton MBA Exam, the American Medical Licensing Exam, and the Law School Exam, as part of esperiment. Although the chatbot recently failed the Indian UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) exam, which is the benchmark test for recruitment to higher civil services of the Government of India, Bangladeshi netizens wondered whether ChatGPT would be able to pass the BCS (Bangladesh Civil Service) exam or not. Science Bee, one of the largest science-based education platforms for youths in the country, has recently revealed on its social media platforms that ChatGPT has “successfully passed” the BCS preliminary exam, scoring 130 out of 200 marks in total. Read More: Top 5 AI Chatbot Platforms and Trends in 2023 Talking about the experiment with UNB, Science Bee Founder Mobin Sikder and Executive Member Metheela Farzana Melody shared how the team tested the chatbot for BCS exam, following a month of planning and preparation and seven days of frequent testing. “First of all, we researched how to take the test to get the most realistic results,” Mobin told UNB. “Since ChatGPT is trained on a dataset available till September 2021, we decided to conduct the test on the questions of the latest BCS exam – 44th BCS, held in May 2022.” “After selecting the exam, we collected the question papers and answers. Since the question paper is allowed to be taken away after the exam, securing it did not require much time. The answer sheet is, however, not published directly. So, we prepared the final answer sheet on our own, after multiple testing from various third-party sources,” team Science Bee explained. Language barrier emerged as a headache during the experiment as BCS exam is conducted in Bangla language and the chatbot is trained in English. It had to be translated into English in order to keep the exam fair. Read More: Google's AI Chatbot Bard: All You Need to Know In the 44th BCS, 1 mark was allotted for each question where the candidate got 1 mark for the correct answer, and 0.5 mark was deducted for each wrong answer. However, candidates had the option to skip or not answer any question; in that case, no marks were added or subtracted. The same mark distribution was provided to ChatGPT and at the beginning, it was informed about the MCQ exam and command through text prompt – and it became ready to take the exam. However, there were some picture-based questions, according to team Science Bee. Since ChatGPT-3 is not multimodal, it cannot read or understand images; hence it was not possible to input those questions, so those were rejected. Besides, it was not possible to translate some questions related to Bangla language and literature into English as it would change the thematic description. “The total number of such rejected questions was 22. As these are weaknesses of ChatGPT, invalid questions were treated as unanswered and no negative marking was done,” according to team Science Bee. The remaining 178 questions were asked to ChatGPT with options, and it answered 142 questions correctly. 24 questions were answered incorrectly and while answering the remaining 12, the chatbot stated that the correct answer option was not found. That means the chatbot got 142 marks for as many correct answers, 12 marks were deducted for providing 24 wrong answers, and no marks were deducted or added for no answer. So, as per the 44th BCS exam questions, ChatGPT passed with a total of 130 marks. Read More: ChatGPT by Open AI: All you need to know In the 44th BCS exam, a total of 3,50,716 candidates applied and of them, 2,76,760 candidates participated in the preliminary exam. Only 15,708 candidates passed the preliminary exam, according to reports. “As there is no specific pass mark for BCS and the cut-off mark is not officially released, we were in touch with several candidates who appeared for the 44th BCS exam. According to the information given by them, the cut-off mark in general cadre was 125±. Since ChatGPT secured 130 marks in our test, it can be said that ChatGPT has successfully passed BCS preliminary exam,” team Science Bee told UNB. Further explaining the performance of the chatbot, Science Bee said that according to the test, ChatGPT was able to answer the questions quite well. However, it was pretty weak in Bangla language and literature category where it answered only 5 out of 35 questions. On the other hand, it performed well in the categories of science, computer or English language and literature. It took a considerable amount of time to answer most of the questions in the mental skills or math categories correctly. “Besides, many times there have been incidents like getting stuck in the middle of answering. In that case, we had to take the help of ‘Regenerate Response’ to proceed and move forward,” team Science Bee said. Read More: AI & Future of Jobs: Will Artificial Intelligence or Robots Take Your Job? The questions for the exam were collected and translated by Metheela. Overall management of the test was conducted by Science Bee’s Content Production Head Annoy Debnath, and the final report was edited by Mobin and Sadia Binte Chowdhury. “We did this test as part of an interesting experiment and will conduct further tests with other examinations when ChatGPT-4 will be available. The chatbot is learning consistently and becoming powerful every single day, and through this type of test, we want to convey a message to aspiring learners and students that we need to move one step ahead of ChatGPT with our learnings.” “That means, we need to stop relying on memorising and copy-paste practices because ChatGPT can do it and will be doing it even better with future versions, and also there are other AI projects in the pipeline such as Google’s Bard. It can be a great assistant and companion to humankind, and it will not replace anyone if we can continue to improve our learning. That is the motto of our research, aligned with our motto and tagline ‘learn like never before’. We want people to understand the importance of learning and be skilled in order to make AI useful,” Mobin and team Science Bee told UNB. (Details of the test can be found on Science Bee's Facebook page and website.) Read More: How Can Artificial Intelligence Improve Healthcare?

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday asked the BCS officers to utilise their innovative power and talents in building Bangladesh smartly. “In continuation of the works (the progress) we’ve done, you all will have to think afresh how this country can be built in more nice ways by utilizing your innovative power and talents,” she said.   The premier was addressing the certificate-awarding and closing ceremony of the 74th foundation training course of BCS officers at her office in the city. Noting that Bangladesh now gets dignity as a development model in the world, she asked the new BCS cadres to uphold this dignity. She said the country witnessed a radical change in a short period and asked the new officers to continue this development trend.  Hasina said they will build the country as a smart Bangladesh by 2041 through making the population, economy and all social systems smart. Read more: Encourage children to take to sports & games: PM Hasina In this time, she described the fresh officers as the soldiers in the implementation of the ‘2041 Smart Bangladesh’ vision as they will go to higher posts in the government services gradually in future. “So, everyone will have to have new thoughts on how a matter can be made more nice and developed in their respective place,” she said. The premier reiterated her call to the countrymen to show austerity in using resources including electricity, water and gas as it is not known when the Ukraine war will stop. The price of every commodity and transport cost went up throughout the world due to the one-after-another sanctions and counter-sanctions. The entire people of the country should be conscious in this regard as well as should make savings, become economical and show austerity in the use of everything, she said. The PM asked the administration to promote the people to exercise austerity in the use of resources and raise food production in the country to offset the global crisis. State Minister for Public Administration Farhad Hossain, Public Administration Secretary Mohammad Mezbahuddin Chowdhury and Rector of Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC) Md Ashraf Uddin also spoke at the function.

The Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) Wednesday published the 45th Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) circular, seeking applications for 2,309 cadre posts and 1,022 non-cadre posts. The application process will begin on December 10 at 10am, and end on December 31 at 6pm and the circular is available on the PSC website, according to Examination Controller Anand Kumar Biswas.  Read more: Govt publishes 40th BCS gazette appointing 1,929 candidates This is the first time that the candidates will be able to submit their preferences for non-cadre posts the same way as they do now for cadre posts. The details of the application process can be found on the PSC website and Teletalk website. Read more: 40th BCS final results published

A total of 13,000 candidates have passed the 41st Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) written examination. Bangladesh Public Service Commission (PSC) published the results on Thursday (November 10, 2022). Read More: Govt publishes 40th BCS gazette appointing 1,929 candidates The results are available at the PSC website- www.bpsc.gov.bd. And Teletalk BD Ltd website- http://bpsc.teletalk.com.bd Besides, one can get the results by sending SMS -- PSC38 Registration Number -- to 16222 from any Teletalk mobile number. The PSC said the viva voce of the successful candidates of the 41st BCS written examination will start from the first week of December 2022 and the detailed schedule will be published through its website and newspapers in due time. Read More: 40th BCS non-cadre candidates form human chain in front of PSC

The government on Tuesday published the gazette of the 40th Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) appointing 1,929 candidates to government jobs. Around 34 candidates have been dropped from the Public Service Commission (PSC) recommended list in the final appointments, said a gazette notification from the Public Administration Ministry. Read more: 40th BCS non-cadre candidates form human chain in front of PSC The appointed candidates have been urged to join their respective offices on December 4. The final result of the 40th BCS was published on March 30 where PSC recommended the appointment of 1,963 candidates to different cadre posts. Meanwhile, 8,166 successful candidates were kept for non-cadre posts subject to an appointment based on vacancy. Read more: 44th BCS preliminary test results published To fill 1,903 vacant posts in different cadres, the BPSC published a circular in 2018. Later, 316 vacant posts were also added to it. Among 10,964 candidates, who faced the viva-voce, 10,254 came out successful.

Hundreds of non-cadre candidates of the 40th BCS on Monday (October 31, 2022) formed a human chain in front of the head office of the Public Service Commission (PSC) in the city to demand that authorities reinstate previous appointment policies of the commission and repeal new procedures of the non-cadre appointment. Read more: Tougher punishment for leaking PSC question papers, law coming They demanded that the commission repeal the new appointment policy for the non-cadres of the 40th-44th BCS, provide all posts of the 40th BCS non-cadres which have been given to the 36th-38th BCS non-cadres.

Considering the Covid-19 fallout, the government has raised the maximum age limit by three years and three months for entering government service. The Public Administration Ministry issued a gazette notification in this regard today. This will not be applicable for BCS exams under Public Service Commission (PSC), said the circular. As per the notification, job seekers who reached the highest age limit on March 25, 2020 can apply at government offices – including ministries, departments and subordinate offices, autonomous and nationalised institutions – that were unable to issue recruitment circular due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They can apply for government job circulars issued until June 30, 2023. Read:40th BCS final results published According to Public Administration Ministry, the government offices could not publish any recruitment circular in recent months due to the pandemic. During this period, many aspirants have become ineligible for government jobs due to the prevailing age restrictions.    

Md Golam Sarwar has been made secretary of the Law and Justice Division under the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. The Law Ministry issued a gazette notification in this regard on Wednesday.  He had been performing as the acting secretary of the Law and Justice Division since August 8, 2019. Golam Sarwar joined the judicial cadre service through the 10th BCS examination. He started his career at Dhaka district judge court as an apprentice assistant judge on December 11, 1991. Also read: PM’s press secretary Ihsanul Karim gets another 2-year extension