Civil Service Bureau to scrap ‘employment by queue’ policy

AMMAN — Starting next year, the Civil Service Bureau will no longer accept employment requests for students of majors considered stagnant, as the bureau works on eliminating its “employment by queue” policy.

The “employment by queue policy” is one that entitles those who graduate from Jordanian universities’ competitive programmes to a government job according to their major, a policy that is to be cancelled.

President of the bureau Sameh Naser said in a statement that as the bureau works on eliminating that policy, it has also amended its conditions so that students of stagnant majors cannot apply for the bureau's employment programmes.

Stagnant majors are defined by the bureau as those that currently have more than 500 employment applications in waiting, which have had no more than a 1 per cent employment rate over the past 10 years.

The decision received mixed reactions from people, with those in favour, such as Maram Salmani, saying that “Jordanian universities have long ignored demands in the job market by accepting students in majors that are no longer in demand, while refusing to make way for recently coined and in-demand majors.”

In a Facebook comment on Naser’s remarks, Salmani said that she hopes the bureau’s decision “alert private and public universities to the need to keep up with the job market”.

Naser noted in his statement that the names of new majors and specialisations created by universities are circulated to government departments and institutions periodically, so that “the right of students in these majors is not overlooked when filling vacancies in state institutions.”

Psychology student Natalie Qasem told The Jordan Times over the phone that the bureau has “done everyone a favour” with the decision, as “it has, for years, warned students about stagnant majors”.

Qasem mentioned the bureau’s major situation report, issued after Tawjihi exams as a guide to students about the majors that are in demand and which have gone stagnant.

“The report has long been ignored by students and universities, so this is a good way to alert everyone to its importance,” added Qasem.

The decision, however, was also received with criticism from people who thought the bureau “is only trying to free itself from the responsibility of appointing people in government roles”, as put by Hamzeh Najjar in a Facebook post.

Najjar, an engineering student, said that the bureau is “looking for a way to blame unemployment on student decisions rather than devising new roles for them in new government entities”.

Salem Rawabha, also an engineering student, agreed that the decision “is not fair” but that “it does not make a difference, as even those with an in-demand degree are not appointed by the bureau.”

Citing his own experience, Rawabha said that the bureau called him two years after he had taken on a job in Saudi Arabia to inform him that it was his turn for a job.