Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury, head of the Public Administration Reform Committee; has said that in consideration of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and session jams in the universities, raising the entry age for government jobs seems reasonable.
“There is no doubt about the justification of increasing age-limit for entry into the government jobs,” he said this following a meeting with the job seekers of 35-year age at Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury has also been appointed as convener of the committee on recommendations on whether to raise the age limit for applicants for public sector jobs.
The committee will recommend raising the age limit in the next seven working days, he said.
“This committee has a single focus - to review the entry age for government jobs. There have been protests for a long time over the issue. We held meeting with the protesters. We will consider the government’s current policies, future strategies and overall situation and design a recommendation. Raising the age limit is reasonable. There is no doubt about that,” he said.
Rasel Al Mahmud, a representative of the protesters, said that they had a ‘fruitful discussion,’ with the review committee. “They have listened to us attentively. We’ll wait for their decision by next week,” he said.
Currently, the maximum age for entering government jobs is 30 years. For the last few years, students and job seekers have been staging protests to raise the age bar to 35. However, the Awami League government scrapped the demand multiple times.
The Awami League government fell on August 5 in the face of a student-mass movement. The interim government led by Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus took charge on August 8.
The changeover in government spurred a fresh round of protests from different groups who had their demands unfulfilled during the previous administration. The age limit protesters are among them.
On Monday, they gathered outside the residence of Chief Advisor Dr Yunus and were blocked by police. Later, the government formed the high profile review committee to consider raising the entry age limit for government jobs.
