The government has decided to suspend all new recruitment into the civil service for the current fiscal year, leaving hundreds of thousands of public service aspirants in uncertainty.

A meeting of ministry secretaries, chaired by Chief Secretary Govinda Bahadur Karki on Monday, decided that no government office will recruit permanent staff or send requisitions for vacant posts to the Public Service Commission (PSC) during the current fiscal year. The meeting also ruled that no office may request the commission to fill permanent vacancies without prior approval from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

The meeting was the first high-level gathering of ministry secretaries since Karki took office as chief secretary last month.

Hemraj Aryal, joint secretary and spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, said the recruitment freeze was aimed at managing civil servants declared surplus following a recent Organisation and Management (O&M) survey, which significantly reduced staffing positions across the bureaucracy.

"As we need to manage employees placed on the surplus roster after the reduction in approved positions under the new organisational structure, we have decided not to forward new vacancy requests to the Public Service Commission for the time being," Aryal said.

A Cabinet meeting on July 16 approved revised organisational structures and staffing levels for various ministries. The restructuring abolished 10 secretary-level posts after the government reduced the number of federal ministries from 21 to 18 and ended the practice of having two secretaries in several ministries.

The restructuring has also reduced sanctioned positions throughout the bureaucracy, affecting posts ranging from joint secretaries, under-secretaries and section officers to support staff.

The Public Service Commission typically announces between 3,000 and 4,000 vacancies each year across different levels of the civil service. Around 500,000 candidates sit the highly competitive examinations annually.