Online Desk  :   Officers from 25 cadres will stage a nationwide full-day strike on Sunday, March 2, demanding the reversal of punishments against 12 colleagues for Facebook posts and an end to inter-cadre discrimination. Muhammad Mofizur Rahman, coordinator of the Inter-Cadre Discrimination Elimination Council, announced the action during a press briefing on Saturday, March 1, at the Agricultural Information Service conference room in Khamarbari, Dhaka. “All services except emergencies will shut down,” Mofizur said. “If our demands aren’t met within a week, tougher steps will follow.”

Officers will also wear black badges and hold banners outside their workplaces from 10:30am to 11:30am on Sunday. The group had planned a half-day strike on February 25 but postponed it due to National Martyred Army Day, after issuing an ultimatum on February 24 for action by February 27. Mofizur accused the Public Administration Reform Commission of favouring a “powerful group” over professionalism, warning that its report risks entrenching “administrative fascism” and derailing state reform.

He criticised proposals to side-lining education, health, family planning, and statistics cadres, arguing they’ll drain talent from vital sectors. “Excluding mathematics from evaluations hampers talent assessment,” he added, also slamming moves to weaken judicial independence, abolish district councils, and push an impractical provincial system. The council’s demands include merit-based ministries for each cadre, scrapping deputy secretary quotas, equal treatment across cadres, retaining all cadres under one commission, and reversing suspensions of 13 officers—recently penalised for social media activity while administration cadre members faced no repercussions.

Mofizur called it a “discriminatory” tactic to suppress dissent. Other proposals rename the Administrative Service as “Land Management Service” and the Ministry of Public Administration as the “Ministry of Human Resource Management.” Agricultural expert Md Arif Hossain chaired the meeting, attended by the council’s coordinator and co-coordinator, underscoring the brewing unrest among Bangladesh’s civil servants.