The government has decided to raise the maximum age limit for government jobs by 39 months due to the prolonged academic life caused by Covid-19 pandemic.
The Public Administration Ministry issued a gazette statement in this regard on Thursday.
As per the statement, job seekers who have reached or exceeded the age of 30 from 25 March, 2020, to 30 June, 2023, will be eligible to benefit from this waiver.
However, this age waiver will not be applicable for the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) examinations, the notification added.
MoPA said that the ministries, departments and its subordinate offices, which could not call for recruitment due to the pandemic, must set the age limit of candidates as of 25 March 2020, for all recruitment calls to be published by 30 June next year.
Jobseekers have been demanding the increase of the age limit for government jobs from 30 years for quite some time now, but the government is unwilling to increase the limit permanently.
At present, the age limit for entry into government service is 30 years but in the case of children of freedom fighters, it is 32 years.
In the first phase of the corona epidemic, the government gave age relaxation to the job seekers who were affected by the general holidays.
Those who completed 30 years of age after March 25, 2020 were given the opportunity to apply for government jobs in the next 5 months till August.
However, after the new wave of corona came, the government again imposed a lockdown. Then last year 2021 till December, 21 months age relaxation was given to the government job seekers. Even then, the corona infection did not come down. A lot of time has passed through restrictions. The corona pandemic has further increased unemployment. The minimum age of several lakh job seekers has gone under the lockdown, said the organizations agitating for increasing the age of job seekers.
On March 8, 2020, the first case of coronavirus was detected in the country. As the situation gradually worsened, the government announced a holiday from March 26 to April 4. After that, the holidays increased gradually. There were 66 consecutive days of general holidays till May 30 of that year.