Faizul Latif Chowdhury - Career

Career

Chowdhury’s professional career started in free-lance journalism in the Kishore Bangla, a juvenile weekly published from Dhaka. However, his literary career commenced when he started to write for the Bangladesh Observer and the daily Purbadesh in his school days, since 1973. In 1974, for a brief period, he edited the children’s page of Banglar Darpan, a Bengali weekly published from Mymensingh since 1972. Later he worked for a while (1978–80) for the weekly Kishore Bangla, a juvenile magazine published from Dhaka. Then he worked as the Feature Editor in the Saptahik Chitrabangla (1981–83). Just after finishing education at the Dhaka University, Chowdhury briefly worked at the Planning Division of the Rupali Bank as a Senior Officer.

Towards the end of 1983, he joined the Bangladesh Civil Service as a fast-track career civil servant. He worked at the National Board of Revenue and its attached offices for a long time in different capacities (1983–2000) until he was appointed as a Deputy Secretary to the Government of Bangladesh in 2001. He was promoted as Joint Secretary to the government in 2005.

Meanwhile he also worked as a National Consultant in two projects, one funded by the World Bank and the other by Norway. He also worked in the Prime Minister’s Office as Director in charge of the Ministries of Finance, Planning, ERD, IMED, Statistics and IRD. In 2003, he was appointed by the government as a diplomat for four years. In 2008, National Board of Revenue of Bangladesh appointed him as Research and Statistics Expert on its Modernization and Automation Project.

Chowdhury involved himself with many publications and publishing houses. He engineered establishment of two publishing houses, namely Adhuna Prokashony and Desh Prokashan. He played a vital role in the publication of a monthly literary magazine titled Dwitiyo Chinta (tr. Second Thought), published from Mymensingh town and edited by Iffat Ara since 1985. He also conceived and organized publication of monthly Adhuna (1985–1987), a top-rate literary magazine edited by poet Shamsur Rahman. He worked as the Literary editor of the daily Banglabazaar Patrika for a brief period (1992–93).