Bangladesh suspends employment quotas after student protests

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s top court on Wednesday temporarily suspended quotas for coveted government jobs after thousands of students across the country protested against what they said was a discriminatory system, lawyers said.

The quota system means that more than half of the well-paid and massively overstaffed public sector jobs – a total of hundreds of thousands of government jobs – are reserved for certain groups, including the children of liberation heroes.

Students began protests earlier this month demanding a performance-based system. On Wednesday, demonstrations led to blockades of highways and railway lines.

“We will not return to the classrooms until our demands are met,” protest leader Rasel Ahmed of Chittagong University told AFP.

The quota system was abolished in 2018 after weeks of protests, but was reinstated by the Dhaka Supreme Court in June, sparking anger among students.

The Supreme Court stayed the order for a month on Wednesday, said lawyer Shah Monjurul Hoque, who represents two students who want to end the quota system.

Hoque told AFP that Chief Justice Obaidul Hassan had also asked students to return to classes.

Despite this call, student groups continued to block major highways and railway lines, bringing traffic to a standstill in large parts of the capital Dhaka and several major cities.

“This (court) order is temporary. We want a permanent order from the government abolishing quotas, except for some quotas for the disabled and minorities,” said Parvez Mosharraf, a student at Dhaka University.

He was one of dozens of students who placed logs on the railway tracks in Karwan Bazar in Dhaka, paralyzing train traffic between the capital and northern Bangladesh.

– “Limited number of jobs” –

The quota system reserves 30 percent of government jobs for the children of those who fought for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, 10 percent for women and 10 percent for residents of certain districts.

The students demanded that only the quotas to support ethnic minorities and people with disabilities – six percent of jobs – should be maintained.

“We also do not want job quotas for women because women are no longer disadvantaged,” 22-year-old student Meena Rani Das told AFP.

“Women are marching forward with their talents. But the quota system creates obstacles and robs us of our rights.”

Critics say the system favors the children of pro-government groups that support Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the founding father of Bangladesh.

Hasina, 76, won her fourth consecutive parliamentary election in January. The vote featured no real opposition parties and was met with a widespread boycott and massive crackdown on her political opponents.

Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping their government’s decisions.

Hasina condemned the protests and said the matter had been settled in court.

“Students are wasting their time,” Hasina said on Sunday, adding that there was “no justification for the anti-quota movement.”

Thousands of students erected barricades at key intersections in Dhaka on Wednesday and blocked major highways connecting the capital with other cities, police said.

Hemayetul Islam, deputy police chief of the northwestern city of Rajshahi, said “at least 200 students” had blocked the highway to Dhaka.

“Because of this quota system, brilliant students no longer get the jobs they want,” said Halimatuz Sadia, a protester and physics student at Chittagong University.

“You work hard only to find that there are only a limited number of jobs available,” she added.